[OS X TeX] MacTeX - a few questions

[Gerben Wierda]

On Feb 24, 2007, at 22:08, Daniel Becker wrote:

>> Instead, it was caused by i-Installer when it installed gwTeX. Gerben 
>> installs a small optional application in /Applications/TeX during 
>> this installation. Just now I blew away /Applications/TeX and 
>> /usr/local/gwTeX and reinstalled using i-Installer; sure enough, the 
>> new TeX folder had permissions
>>
>> 	drwxr-xr-x.
>>
>> MacTeX doesn't change the permissions of /Applications/TeX if it 
>> already exists. The MacTeX package for gwTeX doesn't install anything 
>> in /Applications/TeX. Thus I conjecture that everyone reporting this 
>> permissions problem used i-Installer to obtain gwTeX sometime in the 
>> past.
>
> ...., ah ok. I installed Gerben's gwTeX (and will continue to do so). 
> Maybe he finds the time to fix this, but it is not a problem once you 
> know reclaiming ownership doesn't destroy anything.

Hmm, yes. I can fix that easily enough. I think what I will do is make 
it so that /Applications/TeX gets the same permissions as 
/Applications. That way, if in the future, /Applications gets more 
restricted (not entirely unlikely given increasing security demands) so 
will /Applications/TeX.

Whatever I do, though, there will always be some disappointed users. 
After all, some people may actually *want* the other permissions. I 
have used drwxr-xr-x because it is somewhat safer as a default.

G


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