Re: xetex update via tlmgr fails

On Wed, Apr 01, 2026 at 07:22:33PM -0700, [email protected] wrote:

> > Another possibility would be to redo the installation, use "c" to
> > customize collections, remove the "XeTeX and packages" collection
> > (option "O", that's "oh"), and then maybe the result will not need
> > xetex at all.

> Both this and Norbert's suggestion is enough to get me started,
> thanks.

Argh, I am getting really discouraged by all this.

First, even after selecting "custom-scheme" and paring down the
collections, removing "XeTeX and packages", not only is the xetex
executable still installed (with a dangling shared library
requirement), but the initial fmtutil run tries to build the related
formats, and fails *silently*. This is why I missed it during the
original install. I don't really understand how it happens; I see that
fmtutil gets some extra options there like "--no-strict", maybe that
is it?

Second, trying to exclude the formats per Norbert's suggestion:

   30+0 ~$ fmtutil --sys --disablefmt xetex/pdfcsplain
  fmtutil: fmtutil is using the following fmtutil.cnf files (in precedence order):
  fmtutil:   /opt/texlive/2026/texmf-dist/web2c/fmtutil.cnf
  fmtutil: fmtutil is using the following fmtutil.cnf file for writing changes:
  fmtutil:   /opt/texlive/2026/texmf-config/web2c/fmtutil.cnf
  fmtutil [WARNING]: Format/engine combination xetex/pdfcsplain is not defined.
  fmtutil [WARNING]: Cannot (de)activate it.
  fmtutil [INFO]: executable location: /opt/texlive/bin/fmtutil
  fmtutil [INFO]: exiting with status -1

but

   31+0 ~$ fmtutil --sys --disablefmt pdfcsplain/xetex
  fmtutil: fmtutil is using the following fmtutil.cnf files (in precedence order):
  fmtutil:   /opt/texlive/2026/texmf-dist/web2c/fmtutil.cnf
  fmtutil: fmtutil is using the following fmtutil.cnf file for writing changes:
  fmtutil:   /opt/texlive/2026/texmf-config/web2c/fmtutil.cnf
  fmtutil: Creating new config file /opt/texlive/2026/texmf-config/web2c/fmtutil.cnf
  fmtutil [INFO]: executable location: /opt/texlive/bin/fmtutil
  fmtutil [INFO]: exiting with status 1

It's the latter, successful attempt that's consistent with the
documentation; but Norbert is certainly not to blame because he based
his suggestion on the original error message. So at the very least
this is an extremely unfortunate inconsistency between the error
message and the syntax needed to work around the error, if not an
outright bug.

-- 
Ian