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pdflatex-dev and variants are helpful for catching issues before new releases, as detailed at What is "latex-dev"?. There appear to be several bugs reported and fixed since the latest pre-release was released. It would be nice to be able to test the latest revision by building the binaries from the latest source so I can check whether a failure has already been fixed. However, I can't find information on how to do this. Specifically, how can I build the newest (unreleased) pdflatex-dev, lualatex-dev, and xelatex-dev rather than using them from latex-bin-dev?

In case it matters for the steps, I'm on Ubuntu 20.10.

scottkosty
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1 Answers1

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You don't need new binaries, only a new format.

  1. Clone the latex2e github https://github.com/latex3/latex2e.

  2. Switch to the develop branch

  3. In the main folder or in the base folder (if you want only the base files) run

    l3build install

    This will install the files in your texmfhome. You can change the location either by setting the texmfhome environment variable or by using l3build --texmfhome some-other-location install. The other location should a texmf tree searched by your texsystem before the main one.

  4. Then run fmtutil-sys --byfmt pdflatex-dev

Ulrike Fischer
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  • After I do the above (which works), is it possible to uninstall it? I would like for pdflatex-dev to be the same as before I installed with this approach. I tried doing l3build uninstall followed by fmtutil-sys --byfmt pdflatex-dev but the output of pdflatex-dev (the version lines) still give the date on which I built the Git version. Let me know if it's preferred I start a new question for this. Thanks for your help! – scottkosty Apr 10 '21 at 13:52
  • I never tried the uninstall target before but just did it now and if worked fine for me. I can't say what failed for you, but you can always simply delete the local files in the texmfhome or where ever you install them and then rebuilt the format. – Ulrike Fischer Apr 10 '21 at 14:01
  • Thank you for checking that. I must have done something wrong. Just to make sure, to rebuild the format it is sufficient to run fmtutil-sys --byfmt pdflatex-dev, right? – scottkosty Apr 10 '21 at 14:21
  • yes, unless you have once built a user format (with fmtutil) which shadows the system format. Check if you have more than one format with kpsewhich --all -engine=pdftex pdflatex-dev.fmt – Ulrike Fischer Apr 10 '21 at 14:34
  • It seems I only have one format. The command returns: /usr/local/texlive/2021/texmf-var/web2c/pdftex/pdflatex-dev.fmt. Your helpful responses give me enough information to dig more on my own in case I want to pursue this puzzle of why pdflatex-dev is not restored to before. I might however just give up. In any case, thank you! – scottkosty Apr 10 '21 at 18:17