[tex-live] tlmgr and TEXINPUTS

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 10 November 2010 Philipp Stephani wrote:

 > 
 > Am 09.11.2010 um 15:13 schrieb Norbert Preining:
 > 
 > > On Di, 09 Nov 2010, Ulrike Fischer wrote:
 > >> No, miktex doesn't allow this. If you mount a complete tds-tree and
 > >> you get another tds tree. All applications (latex, bibtex,
 > >> makeindex, ....) will find their files in this tree only if the
 > >> files are in the normal subfolders. 
 > > 
 > > So then all the complains here boil down to the request:
 > > 	Please add a way to easily add another texmf tree to the 
 > > 	search path.
 > > Right.
 > > 
 > > Well, as already said, that is something we might think about,
 > > but it needs some internal discussion, of course.
 > 
 > Have you also thought about how the issues created by TLcontrib (or
 > any other additional repository) could be solved? Imagine a network
 > installation where one user wants the TLcontrib, but the other
 > doesn't. Maybe we could have different roots for the users via
 > user-specific texmf.cnf files, but I think at the moment we cannot
 > have tlmgr download the files from the TLcontrib repo into a
 > separate dist branch.

Providing per-user texmf.cnf files requires a change in kpathsea and
thus, all programs have to be re-compiled.

For binary packages as provided by TLcontrib it wouldn't work anyway,
and for scripts you need write permissions in the main tree in order
to create the required symlinks or wrappers.

I don't think we need solutions for problems which are constructed but
don't exist in practice.  Isn't the system already complex enough?

You said:

 > Imagine a network installation where one user wants the TLcontrib,
 > but the other doesn't.

Imagine a network installation provides "scheme-full" and a particular
user wants "scheme-basic".

Isn't this the same "problem"?

Regards,
  Reinhard

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