[OS X TeX] TeXLive-2007: "/usr/bin/pdflatex does not exist!" Now what?!

[Jonathan Kew]

On 23 Jan 2007, at 12:37 pm, Martin Henning wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Jan 23, 2007, at 3:22 AM, Greg Starr wrote:
>
>> After spending several days tearing my hair out with the various  
>> LaTeX distributions, upon Richard Koch's advice I just installed  
>> TeXLive-2007.dmg and MacTeX_Additions.dmg from TUG.
>>
>> The first thing I see is: "Can't find required tool" ... /usr/ 
>> texbin/pdflatex does not exist!!
>


I think there may be an installation "gotcha" here.

I just watched a colleague install TeX from the TeXLiveMTS-2007 and  
MacTeX_Additions packages. Now, the NewPackages.html page says that  
"a typical user should install MacTeX_Additions, and then one or more  
of [distributions]". What my colleague did, though, was to install  
TeXLiveMTS *first*, and then Additions. Not quite following the  
suggestion to the letter, but seems reasonable.

However, the end result was that /usr/local/texlive contained a  
directory "texmf-local", with subdirectories, but *NO* main "2007"  
directory!

Reinstalling TeXLiveMTS-2007 *after* the Additions fixed this, but it  
was initially quite puzzling that no *TeX tools seemed to be available.

What I suspect is that the Additions package *erases* the /usr/local/ 
texlive directory, at least in some circumstances, and will therefore  
wipe out any TL distribution that was installed earlier. Dick, can  
you check/confirm this?

JK


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