[lltx] luaotfload bug

[Herbert Schulz]

On May 20, 2013, at 10:54 AM, Philipp Gesang <Philipp.Gesang at alumni.uni-heidelberg.de> wrote:

> ···<date: 2013-05-20, Monday>···<from: Herbert Schulz>···
> 
>> Howdy,
>> 
>> Yesterday I reported a bug where luaotfload threw an error if TEXMFHOME was already created on the mactex list. Karl suggested that I should have reported the problem to this list and said that the problem had been corrected.
>> 
>> After today's update luaotfload no longer throws an error and crashes but rather presents the message
>> 
>> (/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/tex/luatex/luaotfload/luaotfload-merged.lua)
>> quiting: fix your writable cache pathFailure to make 'lucidaot.pdf'
>> 
>> instead.
>> 
>> This is still incorrect behavior compared to previous years and the behavior of pdftex, e.g., if it needs to build a font from mf source on the fly. The correct behavior is to create TEXMFHOME on the fly.
>> 
>> Please reply to me directly since I'm not a member of the list.
> 
> Hi Herbert,
> 
> thanks for reporting. This problem was masked on my system
> because the cache directories are created when the format is
> built. Apparently there’s a thinko in the code that chooses a
> writable path; I’ll report it to Hans.
> 
>> This is still incorrect behavior compared to previous years and
>> the behavior of pdftex, e.g., if it needs to build a font from mf
>> source on the fly. The correct behavior is to create TEXMFHOME on
>> the fly.
> 
> TEXMFHOME isn’t used, at least not directly; the font loader
> checks TEXMFCACHE, TEXMFVAR, and VARTEXMF (in this order) and
> will (should) pick the first writable one.
> 
> Best regards
> Philipp
> 


Howdy,

I forgot to Reply All, so I apologize to Philipp for the double post.

Sorry, a typo on my part, it should create any parts of TEXMFVAR (NOT TEXMHOME) that don't already exist. E.g. on the Mac TEXMFVAR is ~/Library/texlive/2013/texmf-var but ~/Library/texlive already exists since I also have TL2012 so 2013/texmf-var needs to be built. For new users the complete path needs to be build. All this should be transparent to the user.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)