Re: TeXLive and dist-upgrades of Debian Stable

pá 5. 9. 2025 v 9:22 odesílatel Lars Madsen via tex-live
<[email protected]> napsal:
>
> For my installations I tend to do something similar to what they do on Mac.
>
> I have my texlives in /opt/texlive/<year>  and so in /opt/texlive/ I made a softlink called "current" that just points to the version I want to use
>
> Then in my PATH settings I have
>
> /opt/texlive/current/bin/x86_64-linux
>
> and whan I want to change it I just move the softlink and there is no need to edit configuration files, log out/in etc. Very simple.
>
> If I want to just run pdflatex from a specifug year I have this bash function in my .bash_aliases
>
> function old_pdflatex () { PATH=/opt/texlive/$1/bin/x86_64-linux:$PATH  pdflatex $2 ;}
>
> usage
>
> old_pdflatex 2023 foo.tex
>
> one can write something similar to be able to run any command from another years TL, without having to "switch" to it. Very handy if someone says "but it works in TL23", then we can easily check.
>
>
I have a similar solution with TL in /usr/local/texlive where
"current" is a symlink to the version which I currently use. I have a
script in Tcl/Tk which displays a menu will all installed TL versions.
The version is switche by

. tl

and selection from the menu. This shows me which one is currently
active and allows me to swich to a different one for the current
terminal only. I can thus install e.g. the pretest but leave the
"current" in the PATH. I can continue with my work but switch to
pretest in one terminal. I also have a symlink with the name of a
project which requires specific old TeX Live. When the pretest becomes
stable, I just change the "current" symlink and it starts to work
immediatelly in all terminals having "current" in PATH, no need to log
out and in, no need to reopen the terminals. The terminals which were
switched to the particular version will continue to use it.

Zdeněk Wagner
https://www.zdenek-wagner.eu/


>
> Lars Madsen
> Programmør
>
> Institut for Matematik
> Aarhus Universitet
>
> person.au.dk/daleif@math
>
> ________________________________
> From: tex-live <[email protected]> on behalf of Karl Berry <[email protected]>
> Sent: 04 September 2025 22:20
> To: [email protected] <[email protected]>; [email protected] <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: TeXLive and dist-upgrades of Debian Stable
>
> Hi again Govinda,
>
>     The following is the result of echo $PATH :
>     /usr/local/texlive/2025/bin/x86_64-linux
>
> Ok, so that explains why when you run "tex", you get the TL'25 TeX.
> So what's the problem again :)?
>
>     1. How to update TL 2025.
>
> tlmgr update --all
>
>     2. had queried about ~/texmf (got the answer.)
>
> Indeed, not affected.
>
>     3. How to switch between my old TeXLive and this one.
>
> As several people have said: change your PATH. If
> /usr/local/texlive/2025/bin/x86_64-linux is before /usr/bin,
> you'll get the TL25 you just installed. If /usr/bin is earlier,
> you'll get Debian TeX.
>
> If you have a terminal window or shell in which you get the Debian TeX
> from "tex", its PATH surely has /usr/bin first. --best, karl.