[tex-live] [texsupport] Re: Installing TeXLive paralle on Win32 and Linux

[Reinhard Kotucha]

Andreas Hirsch writes:

 > I'm not sure wether this is the right place for my question - so
 > please apologize if not.

This list is not only the right place to ask such questions, we are
also very interested in such issues.  We had a discussion about some
changes in TL for Windows at EuroTeX 2007.  What we have in mind is to
make cross platform installation easier.  It is even helpful to know
people who already have some experience with such things.

 > I planned to do it the other way round: Installing it on my Vista-PC,
 > using a mapped share (i.e. U:\ = /usr/share/) as Install-Path. I thoght,
 > this way it must run on Vista after installation and I had to do some
 > after-installion on the Ubuntu-PC.

I recommend to use TeXLive's default directory structure for UNIX,
i.e.

  /usr/local/texlive/2007
  /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local

or, if you want,

  /usr/local/share/texlive/2007
  /usr/local/share/texlive/texmf-local

The idea is that texmf-local is not inside 2007 so that you can
switch to TeXLive-2008 without worrying about texmf-local.

If this structure is not appropriate for you and another structure
doesn't work, let me know.  At the moment it's best to use TL's
defaults and if you have special requirements we can discuss them
later. 

The most important thing you have to know is that TeX-related programs
find their config file (texmf.cnf) relative to their location.  For
instance, 

   <some directory>/bin/<platform>/tex

expects texmf.cnf at

   <some directory>/bin/<platform>/../../texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf

The value of <some directory> doesn't matter, given that 
<some directory>/bin/<platform> is in PATH.

However, the main difference between TL for UNIX and TL for Windows is
that the main config files (texmf.cnf) are different.

Fortunately, as far as I can see, it's no problem in your case because
the Windows version of this file is only found if the environment
variable TEXMFCNF is set (which the Windows installer already did for
you).  Without this variable, the UNIX version will be found (in
texmf/web2c).

On UNIX you don't have to set any environment variable.  The only
exception is that you have to add the bin/<platform> directory to PATH.

You might want to set MANPATH and INFOPATH, though.

If there are any problems on UNIX, run

   texconfig conf

and examine the output carefully.  Please let us know if something
doesn't work. 

 > How do you consider to use debian package-manager instead of installing
 > TeXLive2007 on Ubuntu?

I personally prefer not to mix up software I installed myself with
software provided by my Linux distributor.  This is the reason I
suggested to install it in /usr/local[/share] instead of in /usr/share. 

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-4592165
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