[tex-live] private "tl-bin" directory?

[Siep Kroonenberg]

On Sat, Feb 17, 2007 at 03:40:02PM +0100, Frank Küster wrote:
> "George N. White III" <gnwiii at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Hartmut's post shows it is not only WIn32 where there are clashes
> > between TL and other executables, so it is worth implementing a
> > general strategy to reduce such conflicts.
> 
> I'm not sure that the problems on Windows and Linux/UNIX distributions
> are really of the same type, but I haven't followed the windows-related
> discussions. 
> 
> > Certain names should be reserved for system-specific use.  Unlike
> > common programs like "ls"and "rm", these would abe allowed to have
> > system-specific behaviour.  Certainly "install" would be in the list,
> > and "install-info" would be a likely candidate.   
> 
> What do you mean with "system" here?  A particular machine, an operating
> system? 
> 
> > In the absence of
> > such rules, Debian should use absolute paths in package installers,
> 
> It is an established Debian policy (and a "must" clause IIRC) to *not*
> use absolute paths in install scripts.  And this is indeed very useful;
> for example it's easy to replace a script for debugging, without messing
> up your package database.
> 
> > but there is no reason TL can't play nicely by putting install-info in
> > a "private" bin directory, say "tl-bin", for use by TL scripts.   This
> > could also be useful for TL-supplied utilities (unzip, tar, sed, awk,
> > perl, gs, ruby, lua, etc.) on systems that don't commonly have them
> 
> That's an interesting idea.  On the other hand, it means that if I
> install TeXLive on a Windows system, I have perl and gs installed, but
> can't use them; if I need them for other reasons, I have to install them
> a second time.
> 
> Regards, Frank

Of course you can add this directory to your path if you DO want to
use them.

-- 
Siep Kroonenberg