[tex-live] install-tl inserts 2013/.. in TEXMFLOCAL

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 2:11 PM, Wybo Dekker wrote:
> I installed the preview texlive as follows:
>
>     rsync -ai --delete --exclude="mactex*"
> ftp.cstug.cz::pub/tex/local/tlpretest/ /usr/local/texlive/2013/
>     /usr/local/texlive/2013/install-tl
>
> without changing anything, just typed i (install); the interface tells
> me that TEXMFLOCAL will be
>
>     TEXMFLOCAL (directory for site-wide local files):
>       /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local

Which is right.

> However, after the install, kpsewhich tells me:
>
>     $ kpsewhich -expand-var \$TEXMFLOCAL
>     /usr/local/texlive/2013/../texmf-local
>
> This is correct, of course,

Yes, it is. I bet that if you would change the directory to anything
else, like /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local1, you would get the answer
without the special link. If you don't change anything, the defaults
are used and these are the defaults.

> but as I use kpsewhich in scripts to create
> links, those will be broken after installing texlive 2014 and removing
> the 2013 directory.

In that case you could use the following in your script for example:

> MYLOCAL=$(cd -P -- "$(kpsewhich -expand-path \$TEXMFLOCAL)" && pwd -P)
> echo $MYLOCAL
/usr/local/texlive/texmf-local

That would resolve the links and wouldn't be prone to problems next year.

But I don't know whether kpsewhich should do this expansion
automatically when -expand-path is used or not.

Mojca

(Disclaimer: I don't claim that I fully understand the first line, so
I might have done some stupidities.)