[tex-live] TL 2010 installation does not correctly set path in presence of TL 2009

[George N. White III]

On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 9:49 AM, Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard <mpg at elzevir.fr> wrote:

> Le 06/07/2010 14:36, Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) a écrit :
>>> Perhaps you needed to re-login (or at least re-start WinEDT) for the new PATH to
>>> take effect?
>>
>> I think the latter may well have been the case.  I have not
>> re-authenticated for days, but I was getting fed up with
>> task-bar clutter, so closed everything down earlier today.
>> That may well explain the origins of my spurious bug report.
>>
> I think so. I seem to remember the installer does the adequate incantations so
> that the path settings have immediate effect (Tomek can surely confirm or infirm
> this).
>
>> But just to clarify things : I did include the relevant
>> portion of the installation log (see below), and in that,
>> the user path still has only TL 2009; does the user path
>> not take precedence over the system path ?
>>
> No. This point always surprises me, but the system path takes precedence.
>
> It has a practical consequence : if you installed TL2009 system-wide, and
> install TL2010 only for your user, then TL2009 will continue to be used, and
> afaik there's nothing we can do about it. Hopefully this case will be rare.

Many systems will have TL2009 previously installed and a user wants to
try TL2010.
For machines with more than one user, this likely means TL2009 is installed
"system-wide" while TL2010 is installed by and for one user.

Perhaps the installer should try to detect such cases and issue a warning, but
it is the little surprises that keep life interesting.

-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia