[OS X TeX] Lost in Mac space

[George Ghio]

On 14/12/2008, at 3:06 AM, Peter Dyballa wrote:

>
> Am 13.12.2008 um 13:03 schrieb George Ghio:
>
>> Please, I need to do it to learn it. How do you "cd to the root"  
>> and will it allow you to get package files in the correct places?
>
> TeX Live 2008 has two roots (of installation [the existence of an ls- 
> R file is kind of an indication]): /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf  
> and /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-dist, which means that in both  
> these directories similiar sub-directories with branches start where  
> the components of TeX and its supportive packages are sorted in. All  
> these files and directories are under remote control by CTAN and  
> tlmgr is used to adapt your local situation to that on the CTAN  
> servers. (This might include that non-TL 2008 files and directories  
> added by a user could be deleted by tlmgr upon update, although I  
> have no proof yet. I could try this with my old MacTeX installation  
> before I install TeX Live 2008 from DVD, provided I find someone  
> with unlimited DSL quota for the update from August to December.)
>
> This "cd" means to "Change (working) Directory" *from* where you are  
> in a running shell interpreter inside for example Terminal *to*  
> another place, for example /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local. This  
> change is achieved by typing
>
> 	cd /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local
>
> and pressing the RETurn key (that usually does not return any  
> change). (Recent shells allow to maintain a stack of directories by  
> using pushd, which puts a new or already contained directory on top  
> of the stack, which means that your "current working directory" is  
> top [in German this means something good, I'm not sure whether this  
> expression is familiar to English], or popd, which drops or removes  
> or deletes either the recent directory or the named one. This is  
> quite efficient.)
>
> Having arrived here you have two options to continue or to execute  
> installation at last. In shell you invoke 'sudo unzip /path/to/the/ 
> file/archive.zip' or you open a Finder window with 'open .' into  
> which you can copy by dragging the archive file (or an alias to it)  
> and double-click it. In this latter case you could simply remove the  
> archive file (or its alias) afterwards because you still have the  
> original version in the download area. In the former case nothing  
> like this is needed. The latter installation method can fail when  
> the unarchiver has no built-in means to acquire elevated privileges  
> to install in the system's area. (In your private area, ~/Library/ 
> texmf, these are not needed, and with the first method, on the  
> command line, you can renounce the sudo prefix.)
>
> Final step is to create or to update now the "TeX hash" file, ls-R,  
> as mentioned earlier. This is done in the shell with
>
> 	sudo mktexlsr .
>
> or
>
> 	sudo texhash `pwd`
>
> or
>
> 	sudo texhash $PWD
>
> The middle command might cost a few CPU cycles more. Without a  
> restricting argument some more files would be updated for lager  
> areas costing more time (minutes instead of seconds):
>
> 	texhash: Updating /usr/local/texlive/2008/../texmf-local/ls-R...
> 	texhash: Updating /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf/ls-R...
> 	texhash: Updating /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-config/ls-R...
> 	texhash: Updating /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-dist/ls-R...
> 	texhash: Updating /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-doc/ls-R...
> 	texhash: Updating /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-var/ls-R...
> 	texhash: Done.
>
> In the private area no texhash or mktexlsr – just two names for the  
> same programme – is needed. If you've left your shell you're still  
> able to do the final job:
>
> 	sudo mktexlsr /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local
>
>
>
> Even if it doesn't help permission is granted to re-use it for the  
> MacTeX wiki.
>
> --
> Greetings
>
>  Pete
>
> A common mistake that people make when trying to design something  
> completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete  
> fools.

Hi Pete

Great help. Thank you for taking the time to post. It's about time I  
learned these things, I'm on my fourth Mac and only ever used the  
terminal for latex count.

George
>
>
>
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