[OS X TeX] Command-line fun

[Bruno Voisin]

I've been looking for a way to clean up the texmf.local directory (in  
gwTeX) and texmf-local directory (in MacTeX) after customizing it  
manually in the Finder. By cleaning up I mean:

(1) Set user and group to the same values as for the other texmf  
trees. Meaning, with the default configuration of gwTeX: user to root  
and group to wheel.

(2) Set permissions to the same values as for the other texmf trees.  
Meaning, again with the default configuration of gwTeX: drwxr-xr-x  
for directories and -rw-r--r-- for files.

(3) Erasing all the invisible .DS_Store files created here and there  
by the Finder.

Based on a solution to (2) posted here long ago by Maarten Sneep,  
I've resorted to the following one-liners, using gwTeX as an example:

- Task (1):

	sudo chown -Rh root:wheel /usr/local/gwTeX/texmf.local

- Task (2):

	sudo find /usr/local/gwTeX/texmf.local -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
	sudo find /usr/local/gwTeX/texmf.local -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

- Task (3):

	sudo find /usr/local/gwTeX/texmf.local -name ".DS_Store" -delete

This seems to work well, but being not a command-line specialist (to  
be honest I'm pretty scared every time I have to go to the command- 
line, and even more scared when I'm about to use sudo) I'm suspecting  
something in the above could have unwanted side effects or compromise  
the new TeXDist structure.

Could somebody command-line-savvy confirm the above is safe, or  
correct whatever silly mistake I may have made?

BTW, I just noticed that in a TeXLive-2006 MacTeX install the texmf- 
var directory and its content are writable by everybody:

theo0mc234:/usr/local/texlive/2006 brunovoisin$ ls -l
total 0
drwxr-xr-x    4 root  wheel  136 Jan  4 03:24 bin
drwxr-xr-x   20 root  wheel  680 Jan 11 17:20 texmf
drwxr-xr-x    8 root  wheel  272 Jan 11 17:20 texmf-config
drwxr-xr-x   19 root  wheel  646 Jan 11 17:20 texmf-dist
drwxr-xr-x    5 root  wheel  170 Jan  4 03:24 texmf-doc
drwxrwxrwx    9 root  wheel  306 Jan 11 17:20 texmf-var
theo0mc234:/usr/local/texlive/2006/texmf-dist brunovoisin$ cd texmf-var
theo0mc234:/usr/local/texlive/2006/texmf-var brunovoisin$ ls -l
total 8
drwxrwxrwx    3 root  wheel   102 Jan  4 03:20 dvipdfm
drwxrwxrwx    3 root  wheel   102 Jan  4 03:20 dvips
drwxrwxrwx    5 root  wheel   170 Jan  4 03:20 fonts
-rw-rw-rw-    1 root  wheel  1747 Jan 11 17:20 ls-R
drwxrwxrwx    5 root  wheel   170 Jan  4 03:20 tex
drwxrwxrwx   80 root  wheel  2720 Jan 11 16:38 web2c
drwxrwxrwx    3 root  wheel   102 Jan  4 03:30 xdvi

Is this on purpose?

Bruno Voisin

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