Installation Issues

[Richard Koch]

Paul,

Let me provide more information than you really need, for clarity and since I don't know your exact situation. I'm one of the guys who create MacTeX and the MacTeX web pages, so I probably can answer your question.

We have two install packages called MacTeX and BasicTeX which install TeX and configure everything automatically. If you used one of them, you'd have no problems. But unfortunately, we only support recent systems. In 2022 we support Mojave and higher; recall that Mojave is macOS 10.14. If you are running such a recent system, I'd advise you to just install one of these packages.

But perhaps you are using an older Macintosh which cannot be upgraded to a recent system. That is perfectly fine; Macs last a long time. I have a Mac I got in 2001 which still runs.

When you have an older Macintosh, you often have to solve minor problems yourself using Unix and Terminal. That is the cost of sticking with an older machine. So in the end it may pay you to take a day or two and become used to Terminal. But perhaps I can solve your problem without requiring that you use it right away.

For older systems, Mojca Miklavek compiles x86_64-darwinlegacy, and that is the set of binaries you say that you installed. It sounds like the installation worked except for a minor problem. So you managed to do a little work with Terminal.

Please go to https://tug.org/mactex/mactex-unix-download.html, the web page explaining how to do the Unix install. Further down the page, it suggests that you download and install TeXDist-2022. Please do that.

Let me explain what this small package did. First, it installed a symbolic link to the TeX binaries:

/Library/TeX/texbin

So in Terminal, if you type

cd /Library/TeX/texbin
ls

you will see the complete list of TeX binaries. You should point your front end to this location to find TeX. I suspect it is already configured to go there.

Second, TeXDist-2022 modified your PATH to add /Library/TeX/texbin to the search location. After that, you can call tlmgr from Terminal and the system will find it. Moreover you can now typeset from Terminal if you need to, but probably you can avoid that step.

I bet your problems will be solved.

But if not, send another message to the mailing list.

Richard Koch


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