Computing Sidebar: TeX stuff

I recently upgraded my setup to Mac OS 10.11, which broke a few things, one of which was my TeX installation.  TeXshop is an open source distribution avaialble for Mac OS X that is installed with TeX Live when you download MacTex from the home page of the TeX Users Group (www.tug.org).  TeX is frequently used (including by me) for publications and dissertations (yay!)

Reinstalling MacTeX is relatively painless and well described by the instructions on the MacTeX download page (http://www.tug.org/mactex/mactex-download.html), so I will not repeat them here.  However, I did find that upon attempting to run the Tex Live Utility, I was unable to use the utility to update packages, and repeatedly encoutering the error “Listing Failed” under the update section

My problem was that the utility was unable to access the server for the repository that it was attempting to use for the software updates.  After searching blogs on some slightly different bugs and problems (e.g. http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet), I finally resolved the issue by switching to a new repository.  The steps: 

1. Select the menu “Configure" —> “Manage repositories”
2. Choose another repository by double-clicking or whatever you do for your computer to follow a link selection

This should ask you about using the new repository as your home repository as well (I accepted; probably not necessary), and give a confirmation dialog.  I was also prompted to accept an update of the infrastructure of the utility, which I also accepted.  

I recommend restarting the TeX Live Utility after the repository change, and particularly after the update to the infrastructure.

The infrastructure can also be updated by selecting “Reinstall TeX Live Manager” from the “Actions” menu.

Finally, after the repository change and upgrading the utility, I am able to use the utility to update my TeX packages by selecting “Update All Packages” from the “Actions” menu (updating selected packages is also possible).

This fix was performed for Tex Live Utility v1.23 on Mac OSX 10.11.2  (El Capitan).

 

Voila! Happy TeXing!