On 6/14/2025 10:47 AM, Max Chernoff via ntg-context wrote:
Hi Hans,
On Sat, 2025-06-14 at 09:41 +0200, Hans Hagen wrote:
On 6/14/2025 8:47 AM, Max Chernoff via ntg-context wrote: i wonder if a too frequent texlive sync is good, as it sounds pretty beta
My thinking was that if it's stable enough for the users of the Standalone Distribution (many of whom use ConTeXt professionally), then it should be stable enough for TeX Live. The build script tries
sure, definitely after a few days (occasionally we have some fundamental update, in this case callback refactoring)
compiling a very basic test document
https://github.com/gucci-on-fleek/maxchernoff.ca/blob/master/builder/contain...
and aborts if it doesn't give the expected output, so the TL version should never be *completely* broken. And it's pretty common for new LaTeX releases to break lots of documents; people have posted tons of duplicates of this question
oh, but latex (instability) is not our benchmark (btw, interesting that latex can be broken because from that end it was always suggested that context is moving target while latex is guaranteed stable due to regression testing but i didn't keep up with the latest perceptions)
in this past week. Even the perpetually-stable pdfTeX had a few bugs earlier this year.
oh ... i thought that pdftex was very stable and admit that i never check mkii with that (i just assume that when we can make a mkii format we're fine) in this recent upload i actually mentioned some changes that needed testing; normally a problem shows up soonish and then we fix, after that we enter a period of no uploads; i consider tex live context users to be more interested in stable while those using the installer (and on the mailing list) are more adventurous, involved in new features, awar eof developments, and they either wait with an update or make a copy of the current tree (which is relatively small compared to texlive) and just help testing
and isn't tex live also in linux distributions?
Yes, but almost all the distros base their packages off of the annual ISOs, most of which are severely outdated (TL23 and older are common):
https://repology.org/project/texlive/versions https://repology.org/project/texlive-base/versions
ok, so we're safe there
maybe some delay is better; is there some policy wrt that in texlive?
Karl updates the packages in TL every day; most days there are 3--8 different packages that get updated. And it's pretty common for packages to be updated multiple times in a week (often after a new major version was released), and there are a few packages that are consistently updated almost every week.
hm, times have changed ... (i wonder how that impacts users who expect for instance fonts and patterns to be the same over time but maybe they juist don't update or at least not hit the update button without checking)
like monthly update or so that we can then adapt to?
Sure, I can reduce the update frequency if you want; right now it's set to check for updates daily, but it's easy to change it to every second day/weekly/monthly/etc. My thinking was that since all software has bugs, frequent updates in TL will shorten the interval between people reporting bugs and them receiving the fix. Or I can let the autoupdater run daily most of the time, but then disable it during the weeks of BachoTeX and the ConTeXt Meeting (when updates tend to be more frequent).
let's for now keep an eye on matters and evaluate later
(i wondered about a warning of using a different than default papersize as set up by texlve - i saw that it's optional in the installer - [...] but i'll think about it; manuals are rendered assuming A4)
I tried convincing Karl to let me remove the system-dependent paper stuff (which I added in the first place at his request), but he wants to keep it for consistency with the other formats.
thanks for trying
but that is a bit hard to catch realiable
If the file "context-papersize.tex" exists (full path:
$TEXMFCONFIG/tex/context/user/context-papersize.tex
), then the user has ran "sudo tlmgr paper [letter|a4]"; otherwise, TeX Live will use the default settings. So the only case that you should need to check for is if "context-papersize.tex" contains the following contents:
\setuppapersize[letter][letter]
if maybe just if that file is there, right? Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | www.pragma-ade.nl | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------