[tex-live] mktexlsr ignores "rcs" on a Windows 7 machine

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Thu Aug 19 00:24:04 CEST 2010


On 18 August 2010 Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard wrote:

 > Le 18/08/2010 16:40, Zdenek Wagner a écrit :
 > > I would prefer another solution. TL developers know what
 > > directories are ignored and they decide what the directory names
 > > of the packages would be. Knowing that TL may be installed on a
 > > case insensitive file system, the directory names in the TL
 > > packages should be made safe with this respect.
 > > 
 > Sounds reasonable. I just checked, and the rcs package is the only
 > problematic case, so we could just rename it to something like
 > rcs-pkg, for example.

Yes, this is reasonable, a better name for this directory is rcs-util.

 > The only problem remaining would be a user installing something in
 > a directory names rcs in texmf-local (texmfhome is not a problem
 > since it doesn't use a ls-R index file by default). So we could
 > also decide to stop ignoring RCS and CVS directories (it seems
 > really unlikely to me that someone ever wants to use a directory
 > named .<something> or _darcs).

It's not sufficient to change the shell script, the binary for Windows
has to be adapted as well.  I doubt that it's worth the effort.

People who are using version control systems usually don't host their
projects in texmf trees.  The problem Shinichi reported was caused by
a package provided by TeX Live, and it can be fixed quite easily.
 
 > I'm not very familiar with RCS nor CVS, but I'm under the
 > impression the files in "real" RCS or CVS directories are unlikely
 > to be confused with other files, since they either end with ",v"
 > (RCS) or are name "Entries" or "Repository" (CVS). 

At a first glance it looks fine because kpathsea depends on filename
extensions.  But the way Knuth handles extensions is always good for
surprises.  Kpathsea even enhances the problem because the search
order is wrong, and case-insensitive file systems enhance the problem
even more.

Sigh! Everything could be so easy if computer programs simply do what
users ask for.  But obviously neither Knuth nor Microsoft have a clear
concept.

I'm not concerned about efficiency because no project which is under
RCS or CVS can be so large that the extra entries in ls-R slow down
the system significantly.  TeX Live provides more than 85,000 files.

 > So, if the only harm they do by being included in a ls-R index is
 > slowing down the lookups a little bit, maybe it would be acceptable?

Maybe, but if the conclusion is that mktexlsr should be changed, I
vote for simplicity: Don't maintain a list of directories which should
be ignored anymore.  Just ignore all directories with names beginning
with a dot.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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