TeX Live 2012 released
latex-community.org
latex-community.org
TeX distributions are getting more complex and much bigger, while at the same time providing a _much_ better user experience than a few years ago. TeX live for example has the "full" distribution scheme as default and the users always never have to install things found somewhere on the net by themselves. It just works for most people around us.
As soon as you start splitting things up, it's hard for the users to follow.
"We" keep getting questions from Linux users that "package X is not available and how can I install it? I've tried [many horrible things]?" The answer is usually "install package texlive-something" of your distro. For these users the user experience is worse than installing the full texlive.
One really nice thing is with current texlive (> 2011) is that you can get updates between release cycles. This also makes (IMO) the user experience much better but is in contradiction to what most distros need.
I think 12.10 will include texlive 2011 or 2012 (hopefully).
These often contain bugs that have long been fixed or are incompatible with tools they interface with (e.g. gnuplot/pgf).
One of the interesting problems I have had with various parts of the TexLive community (not sure if it is everywhere) is an unwillingness to discuss support for older versions.
It is one thing to desire that cutting-edge releases release relatively cutting-edge versions. It is very different to insist that long term support distros keep up with the cutting edge.
My software runs on servers. I have no expectation that we will see current TexLive versions installed and every expectation that we won't. Yet we do the best we can and when something blows up (xelatex complaining about being outdated and having to be configured from the command-line) we address it. It's just discouraging to hear over and over that we should be requiring the latest and greatest.
So no, that doesn't work. What does work and keeps our customers happy is making sure that what we have works with what versions they get from their vendors.
TeX is not just for desktops. It is a wonderful part of an automatic document generation system.
In case you are wondering what we are doing, the project is LedgerSMB (http://www.ledgersmb.org) and we use TeXLive mostly for generating PDF invoices, purchase orders, etc, along with Perl modules like Template::Plugin::Latex (unfortunately XeTeX requires hacking some of our dependencies currently :-( but that's not the TeXLive folks' fault!)
Anyway I think we are still supporting TexLive 2007.....
Just as well as that is what is in RHEL/CentOS/Scientific Linux repos.
As long as my documents are forward compatible, I don't mind which vintage of LaTeX I use.
But, the scripts we use to build the stuff etc are all in the archive and documented, so anyone can checkout the 2010 or older release, and start a separate repository putting only fixes in. I don't see any reason not to do it, besides that nobody will do it.
If I am working on an older version, I don't expect you to backport bugfixes of CTAN packages. However, if I am asking for help because latex won't run without extra configuration because it says it is too old, getting an idea of how to fix it instead of being reflexively told "upgrade" would be nice. In the end when that happened to me I had to figure it out on my own.
Here's the thing "that's a bug that was more recently fixed. You might try going about this in a different way." is perfectly valid support for server software. It would even be enough to say "that package seems to work for me on a newer version."
But when it comes to running LaTeX and there is a time-bomb in the program, it is nice to know how to get around it in an automated, non-interactive environment.
Oh well, got it documented at least. I was mostly annoyed at the responses I got to requests for help. :-)
Just to be clear, we've had version-related issues with other thins in the past too, such as Perl arbitrary math libs changing behavior in ways that caused crashes, the way PostgreSQL changed stuff in 8.3 and 9.1 and a few others. This sort of thing is normal and we can all accept that things change and that if you are going to deal with supporting a range of versions, you are going to have to deal with the fact that behavior won't be the same.
It's more a criticism of the culture I encountered when I asked for help.
Anyway TexLive on the whole has made my life easier with the rare exception. I am a huge LaTeX and XeTeX fan. I have written books using it. And aside from the issues relating to upgrading, the culture around it is very helpful and professional. Thanks for listening to my gripes. On the whole the community rocks.
TeXLive 2012 in Ubuntu 12.04. I just found it so I haven't tried it yet.
I have written several books using TexShop - love it.
$ tlmgr option repository http://ctan.mackichan.com/
$ tlmgr update --self
tlmgr: Cannot load TeX Live database from http://ctan.mackichan.com/