[OS X TeX] Re: Using 'ditto' to shrink /usr/local/texlive folder

[Nicola]

In article 
<CANsCCnAdEMG_-5bONrD2wTT+2Aia2g2-k5ZbZqEdODhbc2d+=Q at mail.gmail.com>,
 Simon Burrell <sirgadabout1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Mac Pro (2010), OS X 10.6.8, MacTex 2011, BasicTex 2010 (probably soon to
> be deleted)
> 
> I hope you don't mind if I do a 'hit-and-run'.  In the interests of saving
> space I'd like to apply hfsCompression to the /usr/local/texlive folder.
>  I'll be making a backup prior to doing so, and I have Time Machine, but I
> thought it prudent to see if anyone could highlight any foreseeable
> problems with this action before proceeding

I did some experimentation with ditto on Snow Leopard some time ago, and the 
results were nearly perfect. As you have noted, ditto preserves most attributes. 
According to my tests, the only exceptions were (a) creation dates, (b) 
modification dates on symlinks and named pipes, (c) inherited ACLs, and (d) 
inodes (of course). Since inodes are not kept, OS X aliases may get corrupted if 
you move the copy to a different location (because aliases reference the inode 
and the full path of the target), but that is inherent to any (non block-level) 
copying tool. HFS compression worked flawlessly.

> In addition, it might be nice to thin the 'texlive' folder by also using
> the '--arch x86_64' switch---my Mac uses the 64-bit kernel by default, you
> see.  Does anyone know whether this particular switch would cause problems?

I can't help here. I think that problems may arise if there are 32bit-only 
dynamic libraries in the distribution.

Nicola