TEXMFDBS and TEXMFHOME

[Christian Mondrup]

A few days ago I installed texlive 2020 on my linux work station like I 
did with the preceding releases. I've been using TeX for decades and 
carry with me a TEXMFHOME. So I filled in its path like I use to do.

Upon a successful installation I checked the release news and noticed a 
new option 'tlmgr check texmfdbs'. I performed the check and got an 
error report on TEXMFHOME 'in TEXMF not in TEXMFDBS, but has ls-R file'.

So I checked the variable TEXMFDBS in 
<root>/texlive/2020/texmf-dist/web2c/texmf.cnf and saw that my TEXMFHOME 
was not reflected. I'm a little surprised because I did specify my 
TEXMFHOME when I started installing texlive-2020.

Is that intentional?

My workaround was to copy the assignment of TEXMFDBS to
<root>/texlive/texmf.cnf and add my TEXMFHOME

TEXMFDBS =
{!!$TEXMFHOME,!!$TEXMFLOCAL,!!$TEXMFSYSCONFIG,!!$TEXMFSYSVAR,!!$TEXMFDIST}

This solved the problem. But the idea of my local texmf.cnf is that it

'should contain only your personal changes from the original texmf.cnf'

I know how to add to the value of shell variable. But I didn't manage to 
find out how to do that with TeX conf variable.

Could I have added my TEXMFHOME to TEXMFDBS otherwise, ie. without 
repeating the already existing assignment?

Best regards
-- 
Christian Mondrup
WIMA: Werner Icking Music Archive
http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:WIMA_files