[tex-live] TL 2005 post-installation questions

Karl Berry karl at freefriends.org
Fri May 5 01:45:05 CEST 2006


Hello Itay,

    I am trying to understand the purpose of the TEX*CONFIG trees. 

texmf.cnf has these comments:
% TEXMFVAR, where texconfig stores variable runtime data.
% TEXMFCONFIG, where texconfig stores configuration data.

% TEXMFSYSVAR, where texconfig-sys stores variable runtime data.
% TEXMFSYSCONFIG, where texconfig-sys stores configuration data.

As I recall, TEXMF*VAR is stuff which might get written more or less at
any time, like .map and .fmt files (so I guess the comment above is not
the whole story, actually).  TEXMF*CONFIG is for stuff which is altered
only by running texconfig, like paper sizes and such.

This is (not very extensively) described in the TL documentation, FWIW ...

    Is there something special in the output of texconfig-sys,
    updmap-sys and fmtutil-sys?

Special in the output?  The difference between foo-sys and foo is
precisely and only whether foo{VAR,CONFIG} or fooSYS{VAR,CONFIG} is
altered.

    What's the purpose of the SYSTEXMF variable (especially compared 
    to TEXMF)?

As far as I can see, SYSTEXMF is not used any more.  I think it used to
be an abbreviation used elsewhere in texmf.cnf.  I hope no program uses
it directly.  Thomas?

    Should have been perhaps like that?
    TEXFORMATS = .;$TEXMF/web2c
    MFBASES = $TEXFORMATS
    ...

I suppose it could be done that way, but does it really matter?

    I guess that the following sub-trees should be 
    removed too?
    texmf-dist/{source,doc}/latex/euclide}/

Yes.

    They probably don't harm anyone...
    
Right.

Thanks,
Karl


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