[OS X TeX] MacTeX installation

[David Airey]

Dear Dr. Koch,

Indeed my PATH is not correctly set:

Last login: Thu Jan 24 13:23:50 on ttys000
[AireyDC:~] dairey% echo $PATH
/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin
[AireyDC:~] dairey%

I look forward to the updated packages. Please let us know when we can  
download.

Thank you!

-Dave


> David,
>
> On Jan 24, 2008, at 10:55 AM, David Airey wrote:
>
>> I previously posted about linking up with BBEdit and found out that
>> maybe my TeX installation is not quite right. However, I have
>> checked my file locations against the page describing where
>> everything should have been put:
>>
>> http://www.tug.org/mactex/whatgetsinstalledwhere.html
>>
>> and it seems that everything is fine. Yet Maarten found this was not
>> the case. MacTeX installations says it does this after installing:
>>
>> "When the TeX Live install script finishes, it prints a message
>> suggesting that users modify their PATH variable appropriately.
>> MacTeX modifies both PATH and MAN entries automatically. This
>> modification is done using scripts from Gerben Wierda and is
>> consistent with his TeX distributions."
>>
>> Could this have gone wrong? How do I check that this was in fact
>> done correctly?
>>
>> The reason I ask is because some R scripts also told me I don't have
>> a working TeX installation or that my PATH is not set appropriately.
>> So I'm wondering if Gerben Wierda's scripts failed?
>>
>> I'm using Leopard 10.5.1.
>
>
> You can easily test this. Open Terminal in /Applications/Utilities.  
> Type
>
> 	echo $PATH
>
> You will get a list of locations. If this list contains /usr/local/bin
> and /usr/texbin, then PATH is set appropriately.
>
> Since making the latest MacTeX packages, I discovered that the process
> can indeed go wrong on Leopard. I'll fix the packages in the next few
> days. Here are details:
>
> Gerben's scripts modify /etc/profile and /etc/csh.login to add the
> above locations to the PATH. But in Leopard a different mechanism is
> used to globally modify PATH. Namely, these scripts now call /usr/
> libexec/path_helper, which adds paths listed in the file /etc/paths
> (this list contains /usr/local/bin) and then adds paths listed in
> files in the directory /etc/paths.d. So on Leopard we don't modify /
> etc/profile and /etc/csh.login; instead we add a file to /etc/paths.d
> listing /usr/texbin.
>
> However, it turns out that Leopard doesn't install the new /etc/
> profile if the old /etc/profile has been modified. So our postinstall
> script ought to call Gerben's scripts if /etc/profile is the old Tiger
> version.
>
> Dick Koch
> koch@,math.uoregon.edu
>
--
David C. Airey, Ph.D.
Pharmacology Research Assistant Professor
Center for Human Genetics Research Member
Vanderbilt University Medical Center