[OS X TeX] Lost in Mac space

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 13.12.2008 um 13:03 schrieb George Ghio:

> Please, I need to do it to learn it. How do you "cd to the root"  
> and will it allow you to get package files in the correct places?

TeX Live 2008 has two roots (of installation [the existence of an ls- 
R file is kind of an indication]): /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf and / 
usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-dist, which means that in both these  
directories similiar sub-directories with branches start where the  
components of TeX and its supportive packages are sorted in. All  
these files and directories are under remote control by CTAN and  
tlmgr is used to adapt your local situation to that on the CTAN  
servers. (This might include that non-TL 2008 files and directories  
added by a user could be deleted by tlmgr upon update, although I  
have no proof yet. I could try this with my old MacTeX installation  
before I install TeX Live 2008 from DVD, provided I find someone with  
unlimited DSL quota for the update from August to December.)

This "cd" means to "Change (working) Directory" *from* where you are  
in a running shell interpreter inside for example Terminal *to*  
another place, for example /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local. This  
change is achieved by typing

	cd /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local

and pressing the RETurn key (that usually does not return any  
change). (Recent shells allow to maintain a stack of directories by  
using pushd, which puts a new or already contained directory on top  
of the stack, which means that your "current working directory" is  
top [in German this means something good, I'm not sure whether this  
expression is familiar to English], or popd, which drops or removes  
or deletes either the recent directory or the named one. This is  
quite efficient.)

Having arrived here you have two options to continue or to execute  
installation at last. In shell you invoke 'sudo unzip /path/to/the/ 
file/archive.zip' or you open a Finder window with 'open .' into  
which you can copy by dragging the archive file (or an alias to it)  
and double-click it. In this latter case you could simply remove the  
archive file (or its alias) afterwards because you still have the  
original version in the download area. In the former case nothing  
like this is needed. The latter installation method can fail when the  
unarchiver has no built-in means to acquire elevated privileges to  
install in the system's area. (In your private area, ~/Library/texmf,  
these are not needed, and with the first method, on the command line,  
you can renounce the sudo prefix.)

Final step is to create or to update now the "TeX hash" file, ls-R,  
as mentioned earlier. This is done in the shell with

	sudo mktexlsr .

or

	sudo texhash `pwd`

or

	sudo texhash $PWD

The middle command might cost a few CPU cycles more. Without a  
restricting argument some more files would be updated for lager areas  
costing more time (minutes instead of seconds):

	texhash: Updating /usr/local/texlive/2008/../texmf-local/ls-R...
	texhash: Updating /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf/ls-R...
	texhash: Updating /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-config/ls-R...
	texhash: Updating /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-dist/ls-R...
	texhash: Updating /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-doc/ls-R...
	texhash: Updating /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-var/ls-R...
	texhash: Done.

In the private area no texhash or mktexlsr – just two names for the  
same programme – is needed. If you've left your shell you're still  
able to do the final job:

	sudo mktexlsr /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local



Even if it doesn't help permission is granted to re-use it for the  
MacTeX wiki.

--
Greetings

   Pete

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something  
completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete  
fools.