[OS X TeX] Detecting an available TeX from fink?

[Martin Costabel]

Gerben Wierda wrote:

> Can someone tell me how to reliably detect a TeX installed by fink? A 
> real install, not a stub for my redistribution.

A quick check would be "where tex" (or "type -a tex" in bash). If it 
lists /sw/bin/tex, you can be pretty sure that at least a basic Fink tex 
package is installed (and that the PATH is set so that it is detected). 
Or you could check whether /sw/bin/mktexlsr exists and is a real 
executable, not a symlink to 
/usr/local/teTeX/bin/powerpc-apple-darwin-current/mktexlsr

This is not 100% reliable, however, because Fink allows to choose 
another base directory than /sw. So a Fink tex executable could, in 
principle, live in /opt/bin or even in /usr/local/bin, although probably 
almost all Fink users will choose the default location /sw. A truly 
reliable test would have to use fink itself: "fink list -i tetex". If it 
gives you a line like

  i   tetex-base   2.0.2-34   Base programs for a teTeX installation

then you know it is installed.

-- 
Martin



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