[OS X TeX] Switcher

[Claus Gerhardt]

You did omit some important lines from my ReadMe file:

The buttons are self-explanatory, the one named \cq{Rm local  
profiles} starts a script that removes the local profiles \cq 
{.profile} \resp \cq{.tcshrc} in your home directory provided they  
exist. This would be necessary, if you had installed the  
corresponding files coming with this distribution to override the  
system wide path. Before the files would be removed visible copies  
with names
\btext\nt
profile-old\qq\resp\qq tcshrc-old
\etext
would be created in your home directory. When the script starts it  
will first display a dialogue giving you the opportunity to cancel  
your request.


Claus


On Nov 26, 2006, at 22:58, Joachim Kock wrote:

> From the readme of Claus Gerhardt's Switcher:
>
>> The buttons are self-explanatory, the one named "Rm local  
>> profiles" starts
>> a script that removes the local profiles ".profile" resp.  
>> ".tcshrc" in
>> your home directory provided they exist.
>
> Claus, I do admire your strong nerves!  -- you live dangerously.   
> With what
> right would you remove another user's .profile?!  A .profile file  
> is where
> all the user's configuration of the shell is stored, including for  
> example
> prompts, aliases, environment settings, and some of these environment
> settings may be paths to other programs' initialisation files.   
> This file
> is much more than just a place to override the typically very meager
> /etc/profile -- removing this file may blow the user's setup  
> completely.
>
> As a very concrete example which may affect many users: Fink writes a
> line in ~/.profile like this:
>
>   test -r /sw/bin/init.sh && . /sw/bin/init.sh
>
> whose purpose it is to put Fink's path into PATH and set a couple  
> of other
> environment variables needed by Fink.
>
> By removing the .profile file you break all programs installed by  
> Fink!
>
>
>> This would be necessary, if you had installed the corresponding files
>> coming with this distribution to override the system wide path.
>
> Necessary?!  That depends of course on the scripter's skills.   
> Gerben's
> setpath script, for example, uses a 'signature' which enables it to
> identify its own lines of ~/.profile, and overwrite only that  
> part.  You
> can look in Gerben's script, it is inside the MacTeX installer bundle.
> Unfortunately it is writtten in Perl, so it is somewhat hard to  
> read...
>
> Now in your case it seems that the problem is that the user might  
> have a
> path defined you don't want him to have, or something...  As a rule of
> thumb I would say that installers and other scripts should never  
> remove
> anything from the user's PATH (and much less his whole profile!).  It
> should always be enough to prepend the new preferred path to PATH, and
> otherwise leave the PATH alone.  In principle the scripter has no  
> way to
> know what programs the user has in his PATH, so the correct  
> behaviour is to
> leave it intact so that the user can still execute whatever custom  
> programs
> he has in his PATH, whereas of course precisely the programs for  
> which a
> new version is provided in the newly prepended path will have  
> priority over
> his old stuff...
>
> Finally, as I already wrote recently, I find it very untrustworthy in
> general to write rm scripts in AppleScripts.  Even more so because one
> cannot open and read the script to see what it does!
>
>
> Let me just finish by saying that in spite of my disapproval of  
> some of
> your techniques, I do appreciate your efforts with these difficult  
> issues
> -- it is great you actually work out some possibilities, rather  
> than just
> grieving over Gerben's announcement.  In a sense you are driving the
> developments right now, with your energetic and important experiments!
> They provoke Dick and Co. to come up with something quickly!
>
>
> Cheers,
> Joachim.
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