[tex-live] textlive seems to ignore top of home tree

hometreetexlive.9.virgilinux at dfgh.net hometreetexlive.9.virgilinux at dfgh.net
Mon Jul 19 12:20:49 CEST 2010


--- On Sat, 7/17/10, Akira Kakuto - kakuto at fuk.kindai.ac.jp <+hometreetexlive+virgilinux+c050fb13ab.kakuto#fuk.kindai.ac.jp at spamgourmet.com> wrote:
> From: Akira Kakuto - kakuto at fuk.kindai.ac.jp <+hometreetexlive+virgilinux+c050fb13ab.kakuto#fuk.kindai.ac.jp at spamgourmet.com>
> Subject: Re: [tex-live] textlive seems to ignore top of home tree
> To: hometreetexlive.9.virgilinux at dfgh.net
> Cc: tex-live at tug.org
> Date: Saturday, July 17, 2010, 2:16 PM
> Hi,
> hometreetexlive.9.virgilinux at dfgh.net
> wrote:
> 
> > The above suggests that making LaTeX treat the top
> (root) of
> > TEXMFHOME in the exact same way it presently treats
> the directory
> > where the source tex file resides may be as easy to do
> as to say
> > it (or only slightly less so).
> 
> If you want to put macros in the top of TEXMFHOME,
> define the environment variable TEXINPUTS as
> export TEXINPUTS=/home/rodxxx/texmf: 
> Don't forget the last colon.
Thank you, Akira. I tried it and it seems to work. 

I also noticed that if there are 2 instances of the same class, one at the root TEXMFHOME, and the other at TEXMFHOME/tex/ kpsewhich takes the one at the root of TEXMFHOME -- which is also taken over any instance in the /usr/... hierarchy. This seems reasonable. 

I would like however to clarify that the above has only a marginal benefit for users who already know that they must (by default) place any "personal" class or style file in the subdirectory TEXMFHOME/tex/ in order for it to be found by LaTeX (that is, the subdirectory structure of TEXMFHOME/ is a requirement, not a recomendation). For users who know, placing a class at the root of TEXMFHOME vs in TEXMFHOME/tex/ makes a very little difference.

The main problem of enforcing the subdirectory structure by default (that is, setting the system so that it finds TEXMFHOME/tex/myclass.cls but NOT TEXMFHOME/myclass.cls ) is that it may lead to significant time waste for those who don't know it (and possibly those who provide support to them).

(This is similar to requiring the user to run texhash after a new class installation in the TEXMFHOME hierarchy, which is a very minor inconvenience if the user knows it is necessary.)

I would strongly advocate that the system default behaviour (subject to overruling by the administrator) should be that it finds by default either 
TEXMFHOME/tex/myclass.cls OR 
TEXMFHOME/myclass.cls

I cannot see how that could hurt anyone -- especially if the system administrator is allowed to re-configure the system so that  it behaves as it does now.

Thanks again.

Virgil



      



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