uninstalling an old version

[James Diamond]

On Sun, Mar 15, 2020 at 18:57 (+0100), Denis Bitouzé wrote:

>> I install TL in /usr/local/texlive/YYYY
>> And I have one symlink
>>         /usr/local/texlive/current
>> which points to a sub-directory of /usr/local/texlive (today it is 2019).
>> When I install TL2020 into /usr/local/texlive/2020 I will
>> handraulically change just this one symlink to point to 2020.

> Indeed, nice method.

Glad you think so.  (I was prepared for some less positive comments ;-)

>> Easy peasy.

> Not for an average Linux user.  Nowadays, I encounter many Linux users
> who aren't geeks.

I'm not sure about "average", but I guess I'm glad to hear that you
encounter many non-geek Linux users.  Perhaps the world is iterating
towards a more sensible solution. ;-)

> So, could be nice if this could be simplified with option
> (menu/button) in tlmgr (-gui).

That would be nice.  Given the multiplicities of shells and X display
managers (and whatever under systems not running X) I wonder how hard
it would be to make tlmgr be able to deal with (say) 99% of situations.

>> My PATH has /usr/local/texlive/current/bin/x86_64-linux

> Hence, done manually in your .bashrc, .zshrc, .profile, whatever?

I have it in a file ~/.zsh-path which is sourced by my .zshenv.
(And .zshenv is automagically sourced by zsh.)

> Could be nice if this could be done by the tlmgr!

I agree fully.  Perhaps a solution is for tlmgr to handle the "usual"
cases and, if a user is using some shell/display manager/... that
tlmgr doesn't know about, tlmgr can tell the user that "It sucks to be
you, but here are some generic hints about setting up your system so
that TL will 'just work'."

Cheers.

                                Jim