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/containers/tex/context-cache.tex
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
https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/735500
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ISOs, most of which are severely outdated (TL23 and older are common):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
-----------------------------------------------------------------
___________________________________________________________________________________
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the
Wiki!
maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl /
https://mailman.ntg.nl/mailman3/lists/ntg-context.ntg.nl
webpage : https://www.pragma-ade.nl / https://context.aanhet.net (mirror)
archive : https://github.com/contextgarden/context
wiki : https://wiki.contextgarden.net
___________________________________________________________________________________
