[tex-live] Location of {TeX,*}.web in TeX Live 2013 ?

[Philip Taylor]

Heiko Oberdiek wrote:

>> although
>> (of course) a naive user of Windows 7 would fail to find the
>
> A "naive" user would not even find a command prompt and if he
> stumbles into it, he would not know what to do.

I respectfully disagree; the TeX Live command prompt is intentionally
exposed in the Start / Programs / TeX Live 2013 entry, and the naive
user is almost certain to try it ...

> I get the following error message in a read-only directory:
>
>      tangle: tex.p: Permission denied
>
> Perhaps it is not written at all in your system.

Oh, it is written; Windows 7 "knows" that a naive user will try to
write to /Windows/System32, allows the program to run to completion,
but secretly redirects the output to another location that is
near impossible to locate ...  In fact, by various devious means,
I was finally able to ascertain that it ended up in :

C:\Users\Chaa006\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Windows\System32

> Then tex.web should end up in
>
>      D:\TeX\Live\texmf-local/web/knuth/tex/tex.web

Yes, that is indeed where it landed.

>> to interrogate the system to ask where his/her TeXMF-Local hierarchy
>> is rooted ?), tried "Tangle TeX.web" from the TeX Live 2013 command
>> prompt, found nothing had changed, used the TeX Live manager in GUI
>> mode to rebuild the filename database(s), and finally all worked as
>> hoped.
>
> Yes, by default, the file name database is needed for local trees.
> Only the home trees (TEXMFHOME) are searched directly, if a file
> is not found.

OK, understood, but are you (or is another member of this list) able
to answer my question above :  how is a TeX Live user intended to
ascertain where his/her TeXMF-Local is located ?  The location is
exposed at installation time, but is not re-displayed (as far as
I can tell) through the TeX Live manager GUI, so if maintenance
is separated from installation by several months, a user may well
have forgotten where he/she wanted his/her TeXMF-Local to be rooted.

** Phil.