[tex-live] $TEXMFHOME not working right

[Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard]

Hi Reinhard,

I'm sorry, but I still disagree, and I don't feel like engaging in a lengthy
discussion about that now.

Manuel.

Le 17/05/2010 01:20, Reinhard Kotucha a écrit :
> On 16 May 2010 Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard wrote:
> 
>  > Le 16/05/2010 04:49, Reinhard Kotucha a écrit :
>  > > On 15 May 2010 Khaled Hosny wrote:
>  > > 
>  > >  > I certainly didn't complain, but it was a very frustrating experience
>  > >  > first time I started adding stuff to TEXMFHOME and tex still can not
>  > >  > find it, I'm very glad this have been "fixed".
>  > > 
>  > > Sure, this can happen.  But if you didn't know that you have to run
>  > > texhash, how did you know where exactly you have to put your files?
>  > > You certainly have to read documentation if you want to install files
>  > > in TEXMFHOME.  There is much more you can do wrong.
>  > > 
>  > Because you heard about it from a colleague or an incomplete documentation?
>  > 
>  > As a matter of personal experience, a few years ago, when I first tried to
>  > install something in my TEXMFHOME, I did two mistakes:
>  > - not running mktexlsr (it was TL05)
>  > - not putting tex input files in a "tex" subdirectory
>  > and I remember it took me a long time to understand.
>  > 
>  > Now, there's one less standard mistake to make. That's a Good Thing
>  > IMO.
> 
> Well, you still can do the same mistake if you install in TEXMFLOCAL.
> And this is what most people do on their own machines.
> 
>  > > What we have now solves a tiny problem for people who didn't read
>  > > the documentation.  They have to be in luck if their files are
>  > > found at all (if they didn't read any documentation), and the
>  > > system is slow by default.
>  > 
>  > Well, it's slow only on nfs mounts with big texmfhome trees (which
>  > is not exactly the most common case).
> 
> Sure, the size matters.  But the NFS issue Robin mentioned is by far
> not the worst case.  NFS is a bit slower than a local file system
> because each time you access a file it has to check whether the copy
> in the cache of the client is up-to-date.  
> 
> Suppose that you have TEXMFHOME on a USB stick.  On Linux I usually
> mount the stick manually.  Then all files are in the cache and I
> actually don't notice that they are on a USB stick.  If people are
> using an automounter, I suppose that the cache is cleared if the
> timeout is reached.  Under Windows, files on a USB stick are not
> cached at all.  It's horribly slow.
> 
> Nevertheless, having TEXMFHOME on a USB stick makes sense.
> 
>  > >  Is this really what we want?
>  > > 
>  > Do we really want to engage now in a discussion about something
>  > that was already decided three years ago?
> 
> As I said, I noticed yesterday that texhash creates an ls-R file when
> it's called with an argument, regardless of the value of TEXMFDBS.
> People who used getnonfreefonts in the past *have* an ls-R file in
> TEXMFHOME already.  BTW, I don't know how to solve this problem in
> getnonfreefonts reasonably.  And I don't know whether it's reasonable
> at all not to use an ls-R file in this case.
> 
> If you run getnonfreefonts --all, you'll have about 100 directories in
> TEXMFHOME which will be scanned each time.  And in the near future
> I'll add support for two new font packages which means that there will
> be even much more directories soon.
> 
> Manuel, you said:
> 
>  > Now, there's one less standard mistake to make. [...]
> 
> You have to add the word "probably".
> 
> The current situation is:
> 
>   * You have to run texhash if you install in TEXMFLOCAL.
> 
>   * You don't have to run texhash if you install in TEXMFHOME, at
>     least unless there is an ls-R file already.
> 
> This is *very* confusing, IMO.
> 
> TeX Live is a huge system and if we want to keep it manageable, we
> have to make things as consistent as possible.  I'm convinced that
> consistency is *much* more important than exceptions which make life a
> little bit easier for people who didn't read the documentation.
> 
> And once there is an ls-R file in TEXMFHOME already, it's used by
> kpathsea, but texhash won't update it because it's not in TEXMFDBS.
> In order to update an existing ls-R file in TEXMFHOME you have to say
> 
>   texhash `kpsewhich -var-value=TEXMFHOME`
> 
> Just running texhash without an argument isn't sufficient.
> 
> ***PLEASE*** try to explain this to users.
> 
> The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that removing
> TEXMFHOME from TEXMFDBS was a *** VERY BAD *** idea.  It causes more
> problems than it solves.
> 
> It's better to add TEXMFHOME to TEXMFDBS in texmf.cnf again.
> Everything will be easier then.  Definitely.
> 
> Regards,
>   Reinhard
>