[tex-live] tlmgr and TEXINPUTS

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Thu, 11 Nov 2010 14:54:57 +0800 schrieb Vladimir Lomov:

> I think there are three different request for feature.
> 
> 1. Lars Madsen aksed how to add an user directory with tex files. The
>   question raised because MikTeX (up to now?) don't provide any feature
>   like TEXMFHOME that TL provides. So MikTeX user have to add _manually_
>   that directory/ies in MikTex Options programm. Please note, this MikTeX
>   "feature" is due to lack of MikTeX, TL always (AFAIR) provides was to
>   use user directory.

Well no. Miktex generates "User-Trees" called USERDATA (which
contains files generated on-the-fly like FDNB, pk, map-files which
don't need a backup) and a USERCONFIG which is in the "roaming"
profiles of a user and contains configurations. If a user installs
(with the package manager) a package "as user" without the rights to
write in the main tree it also goes in this tree (I think - I don't
have  a multiuser setup). Packages that you want to install manually
can also go in one of this user trees (USERCONFIG would be the
senseful one) and so this tree can be seen as the equivalent to
TEXMFHOME. 

Nevertheless the advice is in general to generate a second local
tree. For the reasons why I generate even more than one additional
local tree: Because it is useful to have more than one. One for
automatically installed local packages, one for my own private
packages, one for testing something, one for a bunch of fonts and
packages needed for e.g. a latex seminar. Once you get used to more
than one local root you can't avoid to find them rather useful.

(One shouldn't overdue it. In the due of time I declared quite a lot
local roots and tumbled over the following problem: Each new root
adds two pathes to MIKTEX_GS_LIB. At some point MIKTEX_GS_LIB got
too long and mgs, the miktex ghostscript failed.)


-- 
Ulrike Fischer