[tex-live] Better ways to find packages and documentation

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Sat Jul 7 21:31:57 CEST 2007


Karl Berry writes:
 >      > texmf/web2c might not be writable.  
 > 
 >     If the directory is not writable I fear that it's impossible to
 >     install TeXLive at all.
 > 
 > Not at all.  More or less the whole point of the var trees is to make it
 > possible for the main trees to be on (for example) a read-only
 > filesystem or a CD.
 > 
 > The subject is network updates, which means the database file must be in
 > a mutable directory, since it will change at any time.  So, just as we
 > do with config.ps and lots of other config files, I expect we'll have a
 > tlpdb in the distributed tree which corresponds to the original
 > distribution, but then it should also exist in $TEXMFVAR (or somewhere,
 > but that seems like the obvious place) for the local changes.  And that
 > copy should override the one in the dist.

We cannot simply copy things to $TEXMFVAR.  In many cases it's
required to remove an older version of a package.  There are many
examples.  What comes into my mind is vntex, where the name of a
directory had been changed recently.

We have to *replace* packages. It's not sufficient to put a newer
version somewhere else in the file system.  I also don't understand
why anybody wants to update a system which resides on a filesystem
he deliberately made read-only.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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