TeX Live 2022 - 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, report it to the package maintainer. As a rule, package-specific fixes are not installed directly in TL; instead, new versions of packages should be uploaded to CTAN.
• If you have questions about using TeX, or need help with TeX, please use the general help resources.
• To report a bug in TeX Live installation or infrastructure, email the public mailing list tex-live@tug.org (archives).
• For security-related reports, please use the tlsecurity@tug.org mailing list (private archives).

Common requests:

• If you need to use alternate binaries, our recommended approach is the custom binary support in the TL installer. Numerous additional binary sets are available through links on that page.
• For information on 64-bit Windows binaries, see the Windows on TeX Live page.
• TL does not provide modules for scripting languages, or interpreters themselves (except for texlua and a minimal Perl on Windows). Thus it is up to users to install any needed dependencies of third-party scripts. More info.

Known issues in TeX Live 2022

• The Windows binaries are still 32-bit in 2022. We expect to switch to 64-bit binaries for Windows in 2023, but we most likely will not provide both simultaneously. More Windows info.

• On macOS Monterey, install-tl comes up as a black window by default, due to Apple's intentional breakage of wish. The solution is to run install-tl -gui text, which is now (post-release) the default.

• The dvisvgm released with TL (version 2.13.3), does not work with subsequently released versions of Ghostscript (9.56.1 and later), because of the major reimplementation of PDF in Ghostscript. Temporary workaround: set the environment variable GS_OPTIONS=-dNEWPDF=false (this will be disabled in a future gs release).

• LuaTeX, unlike all other engines, does not look in the -output-directory for input files. We expect this to be fixed next year.

• The LuaLaTeX, ConTeXt, and OpTeX .fmt files cannot be shared across different architectures (32-bit/64-bit and/or BigEndian/LittleEndian). This is not new this year, but was only discovered and reported recently. No decision has been made about changing this for LuaLaTeX (issue report, user query); ConTeXt and OpTeX are not expected to ever change this.

• For armhf-linux (Raspberry Pi), the original TL'22 release had binaries compiled on Debian 11; they have been replaced with binaries compiled on Debian 10, as to be more widely usable.

• On Windows, install-tl may output the cryptic message fail bad gmtime (repeatedly). It's annoying but harmless; just ignore it.

• Upgrade notes from Overleaf go into detail about some package changes and incompatibilities. (Overleaf notes on previous releases also available.)

Bug archives for the previous release and earlier years remain online (under systems/texlive; both the initial release each year, and the frozen state at the end of the cycle in tlnet-final).

Notable changes

As always, there were pervasive updates to packages and programs (highlights of changes). We can't list them all, but here are some major user-visible changes in the principal programs:

General

• New engine hitex, which outputs its own HINT format, designed especially for reading technical documents on mobile devices. HINT viewers for GNU/Linux, Windows, and Android are also available.
• tangle, weave: support optional third argument to specify output file.
• Knuth's program twill for making mini-indexes for original WEB programs now included.

Cross-engine extensions

In engines except for original TeX, Aleph, and hiTeX:

• New primitive \showstream to redirect \show output to a file.
• New primitives \partokenname and \partokencontext allow overriding the name of the \par token emitted at blank lines, the end of vboxes, etc.

eptex, euptex (full ChangeLog)

• New primitives: \lastnodefont, \suppresslongerror, \suppressoutererror, \suppressmathparerror.
• pdfTeX extension \vadjust pre now available.

luatex (full LuaTeX news)

• Support structured destinations from PDF 2.0.
• PNG /Smask for PDF 2.0.
• Variable font interface for luahbtex.
• Different radical style defaults in mathdefaultsmode.
• Optionally block selected discretionary creation.
• Improvements for TrueType fonts implementation.
• More efficient \fontdimen allocation.
• Ignore paragraphs with only a local par node followed by direction synchronization nodes.

metapost (full MetaPost news)

Bug fix for infinite macro expansion.

pdftex (full pdfTeX news)

• Support structured destinations from PDF 2.0.
• For letterspaced fonts, use explicit \fontdimen6 if specified.
• Always start a warning at the beginning of a line.
• for characters with autokern (\pdfappendkern and \pdfprependkern), still do protrusion; likewise, autokern both implicit and explicit hyphens.

ptex et al. (full pTeX news)

• Major update of pTeX to 4.0.0 to better support current LaTeX.
• New primitives \ptexlineendmode and \toucs.
• \ucs (formerly available in uptex, euptex) becomes available also in ptex, eptex.
• Distinguish 8-bit characters and Japanese characters as discussed in a TUGboat 41:3 article by Hironori Kitagawa.
• Related changes in related engines: eptex, uptex & euptex.

xetex (full XeTeX news)

New wrapper scripts xetex-unsafe and xelatex-unsafe for simpler invocation of documents requiring both XeTeX and PSTricks transparency operators, which are inherently unsafe in Ghostscript 9.55 and earlier; as of 9.56, these have been reimplemented in Ghostscript, but it will take time for this release and inevitable updates to be stable and widespread. For safety, use Lua(La)TeX.

dvipdfmx (full dvipdfmx news)

• Support for PSTricks without requiring -dNOSAFER, except for transparency.
• The -r option to set bitmap font resolution works again.

dvips (full dvips news)

By default, do not attempt automatic media adjustment for rotated paper sizes; the new option --landscaperotate re-enables.

upmendex (full upmendex news)

• This index-sorting program is mostly upward-compatible with makeindex, with much better (Unicode-based) multilingual support. It's been in TL for some years.
• Experimental support for Arabic and Hebrew scripts; improved character classification and language support.

kpathsea (full Kpathsea news)

First path returned from kpsewhich -all is now the same as a regular (non-all) search.

tlmgr (full tlmgr news)

• use https for mirror.ctan.org by default.
• use TEXMFROOT instead of SELFAUTOPARENT for easier relocating.

MacTeX

MacTeX and its binary folder universal-darwin require macOS 10.14 or higher (Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey). The x86_64-darwinlegacy binary folder, available only with the Unix install-tl, supports 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and newer.

Platforms

No changes to platform support for this year (2022). However, for next year's release (2023), we are planning to switch the Windows binaries from 32-bit to 64-bit. We most likely will not provide both simultaneously.