[OS X TeX] Keeping TeX installations synchronized between machines

[Simon Spiegel]

On 05.01.2010, at 15:25, Chris Goedde wrote:

> On Jan 4, 2010, at 8:39 PM, M. Tamer Özsu wrote:
> 
>> You install Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com/) on all the computers that you wish to sync. Then you can put symbolic links in the dropbox folder to the texmf and TeXShop folders. Anytime something changes in one of these places, dropbox will sync the other machines that you have registered and that are connected. Disconnected ones will sync when they get connected. If you are not connected to the network, as you ask, I don't know of any method that would be able to sync. There is a video at the site above that should get you going and you can register for free access up to 2GB of use (should be plenty for texmf and TeXShop folders).
> 
> Thanks. That sounds like the way to go.
> 
> Just to clarify what I was asking (Alain seems to have understood), right now, even to use DropBox, I have to sync at least three different folders, ~/Library/texmf, ~/Library/TeXShop, and ~/Library/Application Support/BibDesk. (There's also ~/Library/Application Support/LaTeXit, but I'm not sure if that holds anything critical). All I'm saying is that it would be nice if these were all in the same place, e.g. under ~/Library/Application Support/TeX or ~/Library/TeX. If all the apps distributed with MacTeX kept their user-specific files in folders in the same place, then the user could more easily keep things in sync between machines.

Well, there are different rules colliding here. The regular place for settings under OSX is ~/Library/Preferences/ and ~/Library/Application Support/. I see why the texmf is not in this folder, and I'm sure there is a reason why TeXShop doesn't have its settings there, but in general I think an app should follow the general OS guidelines for this kind of things. After all, that's not really something you have to worry about once you set up your sym links. So it means you need three sym links instead of one, but once you've done that you can basically forget about it.

simon

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