The top level directories in the texmf directory identify the major components of a TeX system. A site may omit any unneeded directories.
Although the TDS is designed to be implementation-independent, the TWG recognizes that some installers may wish to place other files in the TDS. For example, TeX administrators may wish to place all TeX-related files (including binaries, manual pages, pool files, and formats) in the texmf tree. This greatly simplifies administration of the TeX tree, especially if it is maintained by someone other than the system administrator. Moreover, it allows the administrator to construct a single ``TeX server'' (even in a heterogenous network environment).
The directories specified in this document are:
for input files used by TeX (see Section 3, Macros).
for font-related files (see Section 4, Fonts).
for (non-font) METAFONT files; (see Section 5, Non-font METAFONT Files).
for METAPOST files (see Section 6, METAPOST).
for files used by BibTeX (see Section 7, BibTeX).
for user documentation (see Section 8, Documentation).
for TeX applications. (In fact, the tex, metafont, metapost, and bibtex directories above may be seen as examples of this.) It may be convenient to store implementations (emTeX, PCTeX, etc.) as well as utilities (dvips, MakeIndex, etc.) in their own directories. Sites can store implementation-specific files (configuration files, compiled TeX format files, pool files, DLLs, etc.) and utility-specific files (configuration files, input files, etc.) in their own subdirectories.
for sources. This includes both traditional program sources (for example, Web2C sources go in texmf/source/web2c) and LaTeX dtx sources (texmf/source/latex). The dtx files used for LaTeX distribution contain both the program sources and the documentation sources, so they are kept in the source tree.
for binaries. The system directories allow multiple implementations to share the common directory structure. For example, the binaries for a TeX system on a Sun workstation might be installed in /texmf/bin/spsun413 (the name spsun413 is one possible (ISO-9660 compliant) abbreviation for SPARC SunOS 4.1.3). Some TeX administrators may wish to put executables outside of texmf altogether.
The standard texmf tree provides no explicit location for locally-maintained files (e.g. letterheads), since that would require duplicating the entire tree. Consequently, sites are encouraged to maintain a separate tree for local styles and to use both trees in search paths. For example, /usr/local/oratex and /usr/local/texmf.