[OS X TeX] MacTeX-2008

[Dr. Clea F. Rees]

On 05/09/08, you seem to have written:

> Folks,
>
> On Sep 5, 2008, at 1:22 AM, Anthony Morton wrote, after quoting Bruno
>
>>> Why does MacTeX do that? I plead guilty for this. Initially the Perl/Tk 
>>> install package prepared by Dick Koch installed everything exactly as the 
>>> standard installation procedure, namely scripts in /usr/bin. Dick's idea 
>>> was precisely that people would get exactly the same as with the standard 
>>> install, for compatibility purposes. I asked that /usr/local/bin was used 
>>> instead,
>
>> And you did the right thing.  No third-party installer should be putting 
>> stuff in /usr/bin, ever.  The only things that belong in there are 
>> components supplied by the OS vendor.  That's a long-standing Unix-ish 
>> convention.
>
> Bruno completely convinced me of this, and it didn't hurt that Karl Berry 
> chimed in at his most insistent.

Even though I've decided to use the cpan location, I think the decision
for the MacTeX installation is completely correct. The only thing I
would say is that I think the documentation should highlight the
potential conflict in the case of a pre-existing Perl/Tk install -
especially since /usr/bin takes precedence by default (but really
whichever way it works).

What I still don't understand, though, is the behaviour of the
installer in /Library/Perl. Why does the installer not update an older
installation? And why does it leave a bunch of "temporary" files in
/Library/Perl? Finally, given that it does/does not do these things,
why does the install appear to succeed without offering the user any
explanation or warning?

I don't mean to sound overly critical. I'd really like to know why it
was designed this way.

Thanks,
cfr