[tex-live] kpsewhich and texmf-var

[Frank Küster]

Hartmut Henkel <hartmut_henkel at gmx.de> wrote:

> On Fri, 2 Feb 2007, Frank Küster wrote:
>> Hartmut Henkel <hartmut_henkel at gmx.de> wrote:
>> > is there a trick to get the right path in these cases:
>
>> > $ kpsewhich fmtutil.cnf
>> > /usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf/web2c/fmtutil.cnf
>
>> I'm confused, because in teTeX "the tools" (i.e. texconfig-sys,
>> updmap-sys --$edit_option) put the changed files in TEXMFSYSCONFIG,
>> not TEXMFSYSVAR, and I am not aware of differences between teTeX and
>> TeX Live in this respect.  Only the automatically generated files
>> (e.g. updmap's output and the format dumps) are in TEXMFSYSVAR.
>
> the following is from a fresh 070128-live install.

(I currently don't have a fresh install, and not even a Debian package
of TL 2007, because Norbert just managed to build it and I didn't have
time to check it out)

> /usr/local/texlive/2007$ find . -name fmtutil.cnf
> ./texmf-var/web2c/fmtutil.cnf
> ./texmf/web2c/fmtutil.cnf

Have you actually changed fmtutil.cnf with "fmtutil --edit" or
"texconfig-sys formats", or is this included in the default install?  I
guess it's in the default install, the edit tools will create new files
in texmf-config.  But I also think only one makes sense in the default
install, and it should probably be the one generated from texmf.in at
compile time.

> /usr/local/texlive/2007$ kpsewhich fmtutil.cnf
> /usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf/web2c/fmtutil.cnf

Hm, behavior seems to differ here, in teTeX-3.0 this commands gives no
output at all, in TL 2005 it's the same as in 2007.  The correct command
would need a --format='web2c files':

frank at sid:~$ kpsewhich fmtutil.cnf
/usr/share/texmf-texlive/web2c/fmtutil.cnf
frank at sid:~$ kpsewhich --format='web2c files' fmtutil.cnf
/home/frank/.texmf-config/web2c/fmtutil.cnf
frank at sid:~$ 

Of course the last one, the one in $TEXMFCONFIG, should be found when I
actually call fmtutil as user.

> but the one in texmf-var is the relevant one for the user, tweaking the
> other has no effect.

Yes, because TEXMFSYSVAR comes before TEXMFMAIN - but that doesn't
necessarily mean that the file in TEXMFSYSVAR is actually the correct
one.  I think texmf-var is the wrong location, the shipped file should
be in TEXMFMAIN (/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf), after making changes it
should be in TEXMF(SYS)CONFIG.

>> Where is actually XDvi?
>
> $ find . -name XDvi
> ./texmf-var/xdvi/XDvi
> ./texmf/xdvi/XDvi
>
> and the 1st one should be used, ok, just not shown by kpsewhich.

I think there's no search path defined for xdvi (nothing points to
$TEXMF/xdvi), only font specific search paths used by xdvi.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Dr. Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)