local file question

[Herbert Schulz]

> On Oct 23, 2023, at 8:39 AM, Tom Sgouros <tsgouros at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Herb:
> 
> By "my files" I mean the packages and fonts I've written and accumulated over the past thirty years of using LaTeX. Yes, it seems kind of improbable to me, too.
> 
> The problem with a link is that by the next time I upgrade or change machines, I'll forget what it's doing there. I was hoping that someone here would have some insight into how the "~" comes to have a different meaning inside the texlive texmf.cnf than it does in the shell. Why is one "/Users/tom" and the other is "/Users/tom/Library" and can I change that? 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
>  -Tom
> 
> On Mon, Oct 23, 2023 at 8:54 AM Herbert Schulz <herbs2 at mac.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> > On Oct 22, 2023, at 10:22 PM, Tom Sgouros <tsgouros at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Hello all:
> > 
> > I recently installed TexLive 2023 on my Mac (Macos13.2), and it seems like variables like "TEXMFHOME = ~/texmf" defined in the system-wide texmf.cnf resolve to /Users/tom/Library/texmf instead of "Users/tom/texmf". How can I make them resolve to where my files are? 
> > 
> > Thank you,
> > 
> >  -Tom 
> 
> Howdy,
> 
> What do you mean by `my files'? The personal tree is really meant for peersonal packages and possibly personal fonts. You can put your source files anywhere.
> 
> One thing you can do is to make a symbolic link in ~/Library to your files: run
> 
> ln -s ~/texmf ~/Library/texmf
> 
> which will produce a small file that points to your files.
> 
> There are other things you can do but I suggest this is the simplest.
> 
> Good Luck,
> 
> Herb Schulz
> herbs2 at mac.com

Howdy,

It's possible to override the default. For the TeX Live installed by MacTeX there is a file in the root of the yearly distribution (/usr/local/texlive/2023/ for TeX Live 2023) called texmf.cnf that contains overrides including

TEXMFHOME = ~/Library/texmf

and you could change that. Note: those files are owned by root so you need to use `sudo` when editing the file.

HOWEVER, I don't recommend doing that because if you update to next year's TeX Live the override file will be back to the changes used by MacTeX and I can almost guarantee the change will be forgotten and that happens more often than changing computers, etc.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
herbs2 at mac.com