[OS X TeX] Leopard MacTeX PATH problems, still

[Herbert Schulz]

On Mar 22, 2008, at 8:04 PM, Richard Koch wrote:
>
> David,
>
> My apologies that this hasn't been fixed in MacTeX; I hope to repair  
> it over spring break.
>
> You can read some details about PATH in MacTeX by reading the link  
> "About The Distribution.pdf" in the middle of my home  
> pagewww.uoregon.edu/~koch. This document explains how BasicTeX was  
> made. Read the sections "Configuring PATH in Systems 10.3 and 10.4"  
> and "Configuring PATH and MANPATH in Leopard".
>
> As you can see from this document, in 10.3 and 10.4 MacTeX modifies / 
> etc/csh.login and /etc/profile to add the new path /usr/texbin. But  
> in Leopard, these scripts are not modified; instead the new path is  
> added by adding a file to /etc/paths.d.
>
> Unfortunately, my understanding of Leopard was incomplete when this  
> document was written and MacTeX was constructed. When upgrading  
> Tiger to Leopard, Apple modifies /etc/csh.login and /etc/profile to  
> the new Leopard versions ONLY IF the previous versions of these  
> scripts were not modified by the user. Otherwise Apple adds new  
> versions of these scripts with new temporary names, leaving the  
> previous versions unmodified and still active.
>
> The easiest fix is to modify your copies of /etc/csh.login and /etc/ 
> profile as described in "Configuring PATH in Systems 10.3 and 10.4."  
> You will also need to add /usr/local/bin to PATH if you use the  
> version of ghostscript in MacTeX.
>
> Dick Koch
> koch at math.uoregon.edu
>


Howdy,

Thanks for this posting. Now I'm beginning to understand why we  
occasionally see this problem pop up.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest.com)