[Tex/LaTex] Updating packages while TeX Live is frozen

ctanlinuxtexliveupdating

This is a follow on to my question from from last year about Why does TeX Live "require" yearly updates?. TeX Live is again in the freeze period and no new packages or updates will be available for the next few months. In general, I am not interested in rebuilding binaries (although I think biber is probably an exception) and I am not worried about updates to fonts. If I switch to the TeX Live pretest, I think I will get package updates, but I will then be susceptible to bugs in the binary builds and changes to the TeX Live package format. Another option would be to pull packages from CTAN and install them directly, but I am not aware of an automated way to do this (and in some ways isn't this what TeX Live is for). What is the easiest way to continue to get updates and new packages while TeX Live is frozen while minimizing the risk of breaking things?

Best Answer

Simpler than installing from CTAN is the following procedure: * download all file *.tar.xz from the tlpretest/archive * try to run tlmgr install --from-file *.tar.xz

That should work in most cases, but has the problem that the doc and source files (in the -doc.tar.xz and -source.tar.xz) are installed as separate packages (AFAIR).

Still you should get updated versions of the packages.

And no, don't do this with binary packages, especially not on Windows (library hell).

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