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Upgrading TeX Live 2024 to 2025

By William Jeffrey Rankin, Sat Mar 22 2025

I recently upgraded my TeX Live installation from 2024 to 2025. My method differs slightly from the upgrade instructions on the TeX Live web site, but I've had no issues doing it this way the past few years. Rather than copying the installation to a new directory, I simply move it (I have limited space on my Linux VM and the TeX Live install is nearly 12 gigabytes). To start:

cd /usr/local/texlive
sudo mv 2024 2025

Next, modify paths to reflect the location of TeX Live to /usr/local/2025. For me, this means modifying my .bashrc and using visudo to update the path for sudoers.

Now, download the update-tlmgr-latest.sh script provided on the upgrade instructions page, make it executable, and run it.

Finally, upgrade as usual using sudo tlmgr update --list and sudo tlmgr update --all. That's it, you're done!

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    Hua Orphans Mode

    By William Jeffrey Rankin, Thu Feb 13 2025

    Hua has an "orphans" mode that enables the identification of files that exist in the output directory but not in the entries file. Here's an example using the sample content files:

    $ pwsh hua.ps1 example.cfg -O
    orphan-1.html
    

    As there may be perfectly valid reasons for the file to exist (e.g., a file referenced in generated content like a PDF or a download) Hua takes no action beyond listing the orphan filename.

    It occurred to me this mode could also be used to look for orphans in the content directory. All that's required is to change the output_dir variable value in the Hua config file to the location of the content directory. In the example.cfg file change this:

    ...    
    output_dir     =  .\blog
    ...
    

    to this:

    ...    
    output_dir     =  .\content
    ...
    

    and run Hua in the same way as above. Content is not processed in orphans mode. Don't forget to change output_dir to its prior value!

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        Running Statistics HTML Output

        By William Jeffrey Rankin, Mon Jan 13 2025

        My Rexx-based running statistics generator now features an HTML output mode. It's invoked in the following manner:

        regina rs.rex data.csv 24 jun html 1 June 2024 Running Statistics > html/sample-month.html
        

        Sample Month Report

        The example above outputs statistics for June 2024. html refers to the output mode (the other option is txt). 1 specifies the scale which effects the length of the distance profile bars (useful for year-long reports such as shown below).

        regina rs.rex data.csv 24 - html .66 2024 Running Statistics > html/sample-year.html
        

        Sample Year Report

        Download

        The latest package contains sample reports for month and year as well as styles (light and dark versions).

        wo-data.zip, 18K

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            Hua Linux Package

            By William Jeffrey Rankin, Mon Dec 30 2024

            A Hua tar archive is now available for Linux hosts. It is designed to be installed in /usr/local. An executable shell script is included (hua) as well as a man page.

            Like the zip version, it includes a sample web site. To try it out, run the following:

            $ mkdir temp
            $ cd temp
            $ cp /usr/local/share/hua/example.cfg .
            $ cp -r /usr/local/share/hua/content .
            $ mkdir blog
            $ hua example.cfg
            

            The installation looks like this:

            \---usr
                \---local
                    +---bin
                    |       hua
                    |       hua-paging.ps1
                    |       hua.ps1
                    |
                    \---share
                        +---hua
                        |   |   entries.csv
                        |   |   example.cfg
                        |   |   Hua.pdf
                        |   |   meta.csv
                        |   |   MIT-License.txt
                        |   |
                        |   +---content
                        |   |   |   another.html
                        |   |   |   first.html
                        |   |   |   latest.html
                        |   |   |   markdown-2.md
                        |   |   |   markdown.md
                        |   |   |   new-article.md
                        |   |   |   new-tag.md
                        |   |   |   no-content.html
                        |   |   |
                        |   |   \---inc
                        |   |           comments.html
                        |   |           footer.html
                        |   |           header.html
                        |   |           read_more.html
                        |   |
                        |   \---markdown
                        |           md-template.html
                        |
                        \---man
                            \---man1
                                    hua.1
            

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                Running Hua as a Scheduled Task (or Cron Job)

                By William Jeffrey Rankin, Thu Dec 5 2024

                Hua can be run at regular intervals using a scheduled task (on Windows) or a cron job (on Linux/Cygwin). On Windows, I use a simple batch script:

                D:
                cd Documents\Hua
                D:\PowerShell-7.4.6-win-x64\pwsh .\hua.ps1 .\hua.cfg
                

                Then I create a scheduled task. Two examples are shown below: the first runs daily, the second every hour.

                schtasks /create /sc daily /st 23:50 /tn "Hua" /tr D:\Documents\Hua.bat
                schtasks /create /sc hourly /st 08:05 /tn "Hua" /tr D:\Documents\Hua.bat
                

                On Linux and Cygwin it's a little simpler since the batch script is not necessary. The equivalent cron jobs look like this:

                50 23 * * * cd Hua; pwsh hua.ps1 hua.cfg
                5 * * * * cd Hua; pwsh hua.ps1 hua.cfg
                

                Note that in the case of Cygwin, you'll need to use the full path to pwsh:

                50 23 * * * cd Hua; /cygdrive/c/PowerShell-7.4.6-win-x64/pwsh ./hua.ps1 ./hua.cfg
                

                If you want to suppress Hua's output, direct it to /dev/null as shown below. Output is still sent to Hua's log file.

                50 23 * * * cd Hua; pwsh hua.ps1 hua.cfg > /dev/null
                

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