TeX Live 2020 - 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).

If you need to use alternate binaries, our recommended approach is the custom binary support in the TL installer.

For information on 64-bit Windows binaries, see the Windows on TeX Live page.

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. We can't list them all, but here are some major user-visible changes in the principal programs:

General

• The \input primitive in all TeX engines, including tex, now also accepts a group-delimited filename argument, as a system-dependent extension. The usage with a standard space/token-delimited filename is completely unchanged. The group-delimited argument was previously implemented in LuaTeX; now it is available in all engines. ASCII double quote characters (") are removed from the filename, but it is otherwise left unchanged after tokenization. This does not currently affect LaTeX's \input command, as that is a macro redefinition of the standard \input primitive.
• New option --cnf-line for kpsewhich, tex, mf, and all other engines, to support arbitrary configuration settings on the command line.
• The addition of various primitives to various engines in this and previous years is intended to result in a common set of functionality available across all engines (LaTeX News #31.

kpathsea

Nothing major other than the above; see full Kpathsea news for details.

eptex, euptex

New primitives \Uchar, \Ucharcat, \current(x)spacingmode, \ifincsname; revise \fontchar?? and \iffontchar. For euptex only: \currentcjktoken.

luatex (full LuaTeX news)

• Integration with HarfBuzz library, as new engines luahbtex and luajithbtex; luahbtex is now the engine used for the lualatex format and executable.
• Loading of dso (.dll/.so) objects forbidden if --shell-restricted.
• New primitives \eTeXglue[stretch|shrink]order.
• Scaling of virtual fonts supported.
• Enhancements to tex.runtoks, which permits limited nested running of TeX.

metapost

Nothing major; see full MetaPost news for details.

pdftex (full pdfTeX news)

• New primitive \pdfmajorversion; this merely changes the version number in the PDF output; it has no effect on PDF content.
• \pdfximage and similar now search for image files in the same way as \openin.

ptex (full pTeX news)

New primitives \ifjfont, \iftfont. Also in eptex, uptex, and euptex.

xetex (full XeTeX news)

Fixes for \Umathchardef, \XeTeXinterchartoks, \pdfsavepos.

dvips (full dvips news)

Output encodings for bitmap fonts, for better copy/paste capability.

tlmgr (full tlmgr news)

• Automatically retry (once) packages that fail to download.
• New option tlmgr check texmfdbs, to check consistency of ls-R files and !! specifications for each tree.
• Use versioned filenames for the package containers, as in tlnet/archive/pkgname.rNNN.tar.xz; should be invisible to users, but a notable change in distribution.
• catalogue-date information no longer propagated from the TeX Catalogue, since it was often unrelated to package updates.

MacTeX

MacTeX and x86_64-darwin now require macOS 10.13 or higher (High Sierra, Mojave, and Catalina); x86_64-darwinlegacy supports 10.6 and newer. MacTeX is notarized and command line programs have hardened runtimes, as now required by Apple for install packages. BibDesk and TeX Live Utility are not in MacTeX because they are not notarized, but a README file lists urls where they can be obtained.

x86_64-darwinlegacy

Drop X11 support, including xdvi.