[tex-live] texmf.cnf problem for DevanagariTeX in Ubuntu904/Texlive

[Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard]

P. P. Narayanaswami a écrit :
> I use Texlive that is bundled with Ubuntu 9.04 with the texmf root
> directory residing at /usr/share/texmf.

So the tex-live list is probably not the best place. Actually, part of
your problem is specific to the Debian/Ubuntu packaging of TeX Live, and
maybe the other part is general.

>  I wanted to install DevanagariTeX2.15,
> whose filesystem confirms to TDS.  The instruction that comes with the README
> file is  is to edit the texmf.cnf file (in web2c directory)
> and modify the TEXMF variable. Insert the line  
>     DEVNAG = /path/to/velthuis
> and then modify the TEXMF definition as:
>     TEXMF = {!!$DEVNAG,!!$TEXMFLOCAL,!!$TEXMFMAIN}

You should indeed add $DEVNAG, probably at the beginning. But you
probably have more that just TEXMFLOCAL and TEXMFMAIN. On my Debian
stable machine with texlive-full from Debian, I have:

TEXMF =
{$TEXMFCONFIG,$TEXMFVAR,$TEXMFHOME,$TEXMFSYSCONFIG,!!$TEXMFSYSVAR,!!$TEXMFLOCAL,!!$TEXMFMAIN,!!$TEXMFDIST}

> Rebuild the file database.
> 
I didn't test, but I think you should also change TEXMFDBS by adding
$DEVNAG too. Otherwise, mktexlsr will not create a ls-R file in DVENAG.
Or you can omit the !! in front of $DEVNAG in your TEXMF definition, if
the DEVNAG tree is not too big.

> When I do exactly as above, nothing happens and  kpathsea library is not finding
> the files.

I think it is because you have a !! in front of DEVNAG in TEXMF, but no
ls-R at the root.

> % This file is automatically generated by update-texmf

This is Debian/Ubuntu-specific. Please have a look an man update-texmf
for details.

> % PLEASE DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE DIRECTLY. It is meant to be generated from
> % files in /etc/texmf/texmf.d/.
> % While changes made by users will not be overwritten, they will cause
> % you trouble. You will be shown the differences between the edited and
> % the newly created file. We will try to merge our and your changes, but
> % that might not always work, and you will probably have to edit again.
> % Therefore, if you want a smooth upgrade, please edit the files
> % in /etc/texmf/texmf.d,
> % or create an additional one (with the extension '.cnf'),
> % and invoke update-texmf.
> 
> What does this mean?

That the file you are looking at is a generated file. You should edit
the source files in texmf.d and re-generate the file using update-texmf
if you want to avoid problem on update of the Debian packages.

Manuel.