[OS X TeX] Re: [MacTeX] Bug in Preference Pane

[Herbert Schulz]

On Jul 26, 2011, at 3:23 PM, Richard Koch wrote:

> Jerome and TeX Users,
> 
> Unfortunately, there is a significant bug in the Preference Pane, build 151, which is
> installed by MacTeX-2011 and BasicTeX. This version of MacTeX will be on the DVD,
> so we will be living with this bug for some time.
> 
> Because of the bug, users who install TeX Live 2011 will not be able to switch back 
> to an earlier distribution like TeXLive-2010 or TeXLive-2010-64.
> The Preference Pane will see the distribution and appear to select it,
> but the user's front end will complain that there are no TeX binaries
> in that location.
> 
> (If you installed a beta version of TeX Live 2011, you may not see the problem.)
> 
> MacTeX does not touch the TeX Distribution Data Structures from earlier distributions,
> but the Preference Pane does, when it first selects an old distribution. The Pane
> writes a symbolic link named "texbin" in the data structure's Programs folder.
> Unfortunately, build 151 of the Pane writes an incorrect value for this link.
> 
> Once you know more details, your inner geek will be able to fix the problem.
> 
> Using Terminal, 
> 
> 	cd /Library/TeX/Distributions/.FactoryDefaults
> 	ls
> 
> You will see a lot of folders, one for each TeX distribution. There will be folders 
> for some distributions you do not have, but that is fine.
> 
> One folder you will certainly have is TeXLive-2011. Type
> 
> 	cd TeXLive-2011/Contents/Programs
> 	ls
> 
> to see the files in the Programs folder for this distribution. You will see five
> entries. Four will be links named i386, ppc, powerpc, and x86_64
> pointing to the locations of binary directories for various kinds of processor. These
> are fine. Then you will see texbin, and it will be a link to one of these other links.
> On my Lion machine, texbin points to x86_64. I believe that everyone will have
> a reasonable value for texbin.
> 
> Now examine one of the other distributions, say TeXLive-2010. In Terminal type
> 
> 	cd /Library/TeX/Distributions/.FactoryDefaults
> 	cd TeXLive-2010/Contents/Programs
> 	ls -l
> 
> If you have already selected TeXLive-2010 in the new Preference Pane, you will
> see four links. Three, named i386, ppc, and powerpc, will be fine, pointing to
> various binaries in the distribution. But texbin will point to universal-darwin,
> which is not one of the choices. To fix it, type
> 
> 	sudo rm texbin
> 	sudo ln -s i386 texbin
> 
> If you have a PowerPC machine, use powerpc rather than i386 in this last command.
> 
> Repeat this process for TeXLive-2010-64
> 
> 	cd /Library/TeX/Distributions/.FactoryDefaults
> 	cd TeXLive-2010064/Contents/Programs
> 	ls -l
> 
> You will see links named i386, powerpc, and ppc, which are fine. But texbin 
> will be a link to x86_64, which doesn't exist. It should instead be a link to i386. So
> 
> 	sudo rm texbin
> 	sudo ln -s i386 texbin
> 
> If you have other older distributions, you will have to fix them in the same way. Once
> fixed, build 151 of the Pref Pane won't break them.
> 
> Dick Koch


Howdy,

Thanks for figuring this all out!

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)