TeX Live 2011 - bugs and updates

Most of TeX Live is a redistribution of packages and programs from elsewhere, primarily CTAN. So, the target for bug reports varies according to the nature of the problem.

• If you have problems with a TeX document, e.g., a package is no longer behaving as it used to, this needs to be reported to the package maintainer. As a rule, packages fixes are not installed directly in TL, or made by TL developers.
• If you have questions about using TeX, or need help achieving a particular result, please use the general help resources.
• For TeX Live installation and infrastructure bug reports, please email the tex-live mailing list.

Highlights of changes in this release. Two selected items: the MacOSX binaries now require Leopard or later; the biber program for bibliography processing is included on common platforms.

Known issues in TeX Live 2011:

• On Windows, it is not possible to upgrade from TL 2010 to TL 2011, so you must install the new release in a new directory. install-tl may offer to import options (not packages) from a previous release, but results are not guaranteed. (On Unix, an upgrade procedure is available, but it is not trivial, and we still recommend doing a new installation.)
• The asy binary on x86_64-linux (only) is out of date. The current version is available via network update.
• The TeXworks Windows binary, as distributed, can mangle the display of lines, especially of longish documents (the data is intact, but displayed wrongly). Also, when moving across such lines, TeXworks crashes, so save especially often. As a workaround, trigger a relayout of the TeXworks application window by, for example, resizing the window, or toggling the “Line Numbers” or “Wrap Lines” features.
• Solaris Intel binaries were compiled for Solaris 11. Alternate binaries compiled on Solaris 10 are available.
• FreeBSD binaries might not work for a (very) small number of users; for them, extended FreeBSD support is available. Adventurous FreeBSD users might want to try development builds.
• Binaries for armel-linux and mipsel-linux are available (and will hopefully be included in future releases).
• tlmgrgui appears not to work properly with the SCIM daemon running; for instance, input text boxes might not be writable. Use IBUS instead, or try XIM_PROGRAM=scim; XIM_ARGS=-d. (If the gui is working fine for you, ignore this.)
• On *BSD systems, by default perl-Tk is compiled without XFT support, and the result can have font problems in tlmgrgui. On FreeBSD, you need to pass WITH_XFT to the port, for example:

  # cd /usr/ports/x11-toolkits/p5-Tk
  # make -DWITH_XFT install clean
  

• On Windows, sometimes ‘Permission denied’ errors may occur. This may be due to Windows locking files, or it may be something else. It may also help to turn off virus checkers, the indexing service, and any other processes that scan the entire filesystem. Also, using the advanced installer (install-tl-advanced) and selecting a smaller scheme is less likely to run into trouble. You can always install additional packages later.

If you need to use alternate binaries, the custom binary support in the TL installer may prove useful.

Bug archives for the previous release and earlier years are still online.