Keep old releases

[krlmlr]

Some of my documents rely on the outdated/obsolete/broken/unmaintained/wonderful {tabu} package which finally breaks in TeXlive 2021. Can we please keep old versions around for some time to account for this and similar situations?

[cderv]

I did not know that tabu was no more working. We still include it by default in the full bundle called TinyTeX I think. 🤔

Anyway, regarding your suggestion, I believe bundled version are kept already as we publish them now as Github release since January 2021. I don't think they can be removed at some point without us doing so, are they ?

So, you should be able to install March bundle which should be with TeX Live 2020. However, you won't be able to install anything else than the bundled package I think because CTAN mirror are not snapshot and must be used with last TeX Live released. (From my understanding)

You could install the bundle with most included packages ("TinyTeX") from March this way:

tinytex:::install_prebuilt("TinyTeX", version = "2021.03")

It would be with TeX Live 2020 from March 2020 and it would include the tabu CTAN package at this date.

Did you try this already ? Am I missing something ?

[krlmlr]

Thanks. I was just wondering if you plan on purging the old releases. If not, that's excellent!

Thanks for the pointer to tinytex:::install_prebuilt() . I might have found a better way, updates follow.

[cderv]

Thanks. I was just wondering if you plan on purging the old releases. If not, that's excellent!

Oh I don't plan too.

@yihui do we have constraint on this ? Do you know if Github will purge after a number of release ?
I don't think you are planning to purge either, right ?

I am not aware of a max number or max size. 🤔

I might have found a better way, updates follow.

Curious about this new way !

[yihui]

I won't purge old releases by myself, and I don't think Github will purge them, either.

[cderv]

Great !

I think we're good then. @krlmlr we could close this I guess ?
Or was there another point to look into ?

[cderv]

@krlmlr I see you shared the way to do it all the way from installing past version to setting a frozen repo which is a key part
https://www.cynkra.com/blog/2021-10-07-old-texlive/

Thanks for the post!

Just a small note. For

tinytex::tlmgr("option repository https://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/tug/historic/systems/texlive/2020/tlnet-final")

there is a function for this in tinytex

tinytex::tlmgr_repo("https://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/tug/historic/systems/texlive/2020/tlnet-final")

Someway easier to remember when using mainly R.

[krlmlr]

Thanks, updated the blog post.

[cderv]

Thanks!

Can you just update my name at the end to correct the typo ?

Thanks Christophe Devrieux for the hint!

-Devrieux 
+Dervieux

Thank you !

[krlmlr]

Sorry, fixed now!

[cderv]

No problem. Thanks !

[fkohrt]

@cderv, @krlmlr tinytex::tlmgr_repo(url = ...), in contrast to tinytex::tlmgr("option repository ..."), does not work with historic Tex Live releases, because /systems/texlive/tlnet gets automatically appended to the url, making it invalid.

E.g. https://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/tug/historic/systems/texlive/2020/tlnet-final → https://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/tug/historic/systems/texlive/2020/tlnet-final/systems/texlive/tlnet

The same is true for the repository passed as argument to tinytex::install_tinytex.

[cderv]

Good to know ! I did not pay attention to this difference... This seems like something to fix if we can

[cderv]

For now, this would mean to use

tinytex::tlmgr_repo(url = I("https://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/tug/historic/systems/texlive/2020/tlnet-final"))

and same in

tinytex::install_tinytex(repository = I("https://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/tug/historic/systems/texlive/2020/tlnet-final"))`

But you need to know that the url won't work otherwise.

We could detect by testing the url after append and use the original one if not accessible.

[krlmlr]

...and fixed for now in https://www.cynkra.com/blog/2021-10-07-old-texlive/. Thanks for the feedback!

[cderv]

FYI we have added a tweak in normalize_repo() to not append if the url + append is not reachable (to status 200 request). This requires capabilities('libcurl') but can solve case like this when they arises.

So now it should work fine with https://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/tug/historic/systems/texlive/2020/tlnet-final too.