Online service to compare different versions of TeX Live?

Question

I’ve been wondering if there is any online service which allows one to compile a document using different versions of TeX Live (2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, …) and compare the result. I’m imagining something like browsershots (web development) or, to a lesser extent, ideone (general programming) for TeX.

I often find myself wishing that something like this existed when comparing document output between different versions of TeX Live or finding out when a bug in a certain package was introduced/fixed. However, having so many different full installations of TeX Live side by side is not something that is easy to set up or maintain. So, is there another solution that allows comparing different versions of TeX Live quickly?

I'm not sure why you say it's hard to have different TL versions set up: I have every one since TL'09 on my laptop. However, 'TeX Live version' is a rather imprecise thing to use for tracking package bugs: it's only engine binaries that are fixed. For individual packages, the version can change throughout the year. — Joseph Wright, Dec 28 '18 at 08:09
@JosephWright It’s hard in the sense of requiring continuous manual maintenance, a lot of time for the initial setup and a lot of disk space. What I was thinking of were the “frozen” versions of TeX Live at the end of the year. — Socob, Dec 30 '18 at 19:08
@Socob Well yes you need a bit of disk space, but the effort is pretty minimal once you get things set up — Joseph Wright, Dec 30 '18 at 19:09

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 01 '21 at 22:27

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It's been a while since this question was asked, but for further reference: on Overleaf https://www.overleaf.com/ you can select the system used to compile a project, and it proposes texlive versions dating back to 2014.

answered Aug 01 '21 at 22:27

Vincent Beffara

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It’s not perfect, since it’s not entirely clear what is included in those versions (e. g. there are two versions of TeX Live 2016, namely “2016 (Overleaf v1) (Legacy)” and “2016 (ShareLaTeX) (Legacy)”), but still very useful – thanks! – Socob Aug 03 '21 at 07:12

Online service to compare different versions of TeX Live?

1 Answers1