[OS X TeX] Assorted issues with i-installed setup, or, "huuh?...aHA!"

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 13.12.2006 um 16:06 schrieb Jonathon Swiderski:

> Ranganathan:10:00AM % env | grep TEX
> TEXMFMAIN=/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf
> TEXMF=/usr/share/texmf

Where do these two settings come from? None of them is needed when  
you have texmf.cnf around, may it be short or may it be long.

A simple try in zsh (which I don't use that often) would be to remove  
these two variables:

	unset TEXMF TEXMFMAIN

and then to try again to pdflatex in this shell – and only in this  
shell in this Terminal instance the two variables will be removed  
from its environment.

A second thing to pay attention to: most TeXShop engines are tcsh  
scripts, and most shell scripts are (Bourne) sh based!

> Ranganathan:10:00AM % which pdflatex
> /usr/local/teTeX/bin/i386-apple-darwin-current/pdflatex

The right intel binary from the teTeX i-Package is obviously found.

> Ranganathan:10:01AM % echo "Path is $PATH in my $SHELL"
> Path is /Users/jswiders/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/ 
> teTeX/bin/i386-apple-darwin-current:/opt/local/bin:/Applications/:/ 
> usr/sbin:/sbin:/Users/jswiders/bin
> in my /bin/zsh
>
> I seem to have duplicated my $HOME/bin in there, but I'm not sure what
> else is wrong. . ..  *should* i have the texmf trees in there?  I'd
> thought that wasn't necessary, mostly because i'd never had to do it
> before. . . .

It does not matter how often an element of PATH is repeated. Any  
shell from today uses internal optimised hashes of executables from  
$PATH. The important thing is that a particular path is mentioned in  
the right place.

With unsetting TEXMF and TEXMFMAIN and this value of PATH you should  
succeed.


An average TeX binary knows its absolute path name it has in the  
installation. From this it can deduce where the ROOT is and where  
configuration files are left. If this binary is misled by environment  
variables it misses to set itself up correctly and to find all  
resources needed to convert a TeX source file to DVI or PDF.

--
Greetings

   Pete

Wasting time is an important part of living.



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