pretesting please

[Siep Kroonenberg]

On Thu, Mar 21, 2019 at 04:33:30PM +0000, Taylor, P wrote:
> 
> Siep Kroonenberg wrote:
> 
> > It looks like the output from a stack trace. It means that tlshell
> > failed to start tlmgr.
> >
> > I recall you mentioning that you keep several TeX Live distributions
> > on your system. It might be safer to do portable installations,
> > which by design do not get in each other's way. The file
> > tl-tray-menu.exe in the installation root creates a temporary tray
> > menu as a substitute for the TL menu under the start menu.
> 
> OK, thank you for that feedback/suggestion Siep.  If I use a portable 
> installation, I remember the installer warning me that it might modify 
> some of my pre-specified locations.  In what circumstances would it do 

Just try. The effect on the installer interface is immediate.

> that, and could it still share C:\TeX\Live\TeX-MF\Local, from where my 
> (mandatory) support for Hebrew originates ?  And is there a tracing 

Anyhow, you should be able to define custom locations of trees in
<TL_root>/texmf.cnf.

> option by which I/we might learn more about why TLSHELL is (apparently) 
> failing to start TLMGR ?  I find that if I launch it from the command 
> line (as "tlshell --debug"), it demands privilege elevation.

tlshell checks the registry whether it needs privilege escalation,
and does some murky process token stuff to check whether it has
administrative permissions.

I guess that tlshell does not find the relevant registry entry,
otherwise you would have gotten a UAC prompt.

Maybe it was a search path problem, which should be fixed in the
latest upload.

Or maybe the TL tree is read-only for non-adminstrators, although I
think that would have led to different symptoms.

-- 
Siep Kroonenberg