[tex-live] Why is "create symlinks in standard directories" option hidden?

Lars Madsen daleif at imf.au.dk
Mon May 20 10:17:23 CEST 2013


These days there are many Linux users that are just users.

They (1) does not understand the symlink concept, (2) will not understand why care is needed to reinstall or remove TL when these symlinks are present.

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-----Original Message-----
From: Zdenek Wagner [zdenek.wagner at gmail.com]
Received: søndag, 19 maj 2013, 16:32
To: Denis Bitouzé [dbitouze at wanadoo.fr]
CC: TeX Live [tex-live at tug.org]
Subject: Re: [tex-live] Why is "create symlinks in standard directories" option hidden?

2013/5/19 Denis Bitouzé <dbitouze at wanadoo.fr>:
> Le dimanche 19/05/13 à 21h07,
> Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at> a écrit :
>
>> Because we do NOT recommend using it.
>
> If so, why providing it?
>
> AFAICS, it is very convenient: no post-install configuration needed,
> same process with every shell, everything works out of the box, etc.
> What are the drawbacks?

There are two drawbacks:
1. Linux often installs its own TeX even if it is not asked to do ti.
If you make symlinks both TeX distributions are badly mixed and
produce wierd errors.

2. You cannot have several TL versions installed in parallel. If an
important document compiled in an old version but does not compile in
the current version and you have no time to search the source of the
compatibility problem, there is no way back.
> --
> Denis
>



--
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz

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