[tex-live] Pathological search path for TeXMF.cnf

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Sun Mar 15 07:50:42 CET 2015


On 2015-03-14 at 10:14:35 +0000, Philip Taylor wrote:

 > Dear Akira -- Thank you for your prompt reply.  I am very happy to
 > accept that (for my system) the search path for TeXMF.cnf is correct,
 > but I am still very unclear why the rule-set that you enumerate is
 > logical.  For example, and assuming that all binaries are in :
 > 
 > 	.../bin/win32
 > 
 > > $SELFAUTOLOC
 > > $SELFAUTOLOC/share/texmf-local/web2c
 > > $SELFAUTOLOC/share/texmf-dist/web2c
 > > $SELFAUTOLOC/share/texmf/web2c
 > 
 > Why might there be a "share" under /bin/win32 ?
 > 
 > > $SELFAUTOLOC/texmf-local/web2c
 > > $SELFAUTOLOC/texmf-dist/web2c
 > > $SELFAUTOLOC/texmf/web2c
 > 
 > Why might there be a texmf-local/texmf-dist/texmf under /bin/win32
 > 
 > > $SELFAUTODIR
 > > $SELFAUTODIR/share/texmf-local/web2c
 > > $SELFAUTODIR/share/texmf-dist/web2c
 > > $SELFAUTODIR/share/texmf/web2c
 > > $SELFAUTODIR/texmf-local/web2c
 > 
 > Why does the configuration assume that there will be a "texmf-local" at
 > all, given that the user can specify (e.g.,) /TeX/Live/TeXMF/Local as
 > the local equivalent of "texmf-local" at installation time.
 > 
 > And so on ...

Hi Phil,
directories which don't exist are not critical in respect of
efficiency.

You are running TeX Live in three different environments.  Two of them
are fast, one is slow.  You are now investigating the config files.
Is it possible to confirm that they are identical on all these
systems?

I don't know why Windows is [sometimes] so slow.  A LaTeX file written
by a colleague could be compiled within 40 seconds.  Under CentOS
running in a virtual machine on top of Windows I needed only 8 seconds.
My colleague installed Linux in a virtual machine as well and could
compile his document within 8 seconds too.

Why is Windows so slow?  Many people claim that the file system is
the culprit.  On the other hand I wrote a LuaTeX program where speed
matters.  It reads a few files from the file system and creates a PDF
file.  There is absolutely no difference whether this file is
processed on Unix or Windows.  Admittedly, I optimised the program so
that it doesn't depend on too many external files and I pushed as much
as possible to the format file.  Maybe the Windows file system is the
bottle neck indeed, but I'm not sure.

Phil, in order to avoid too many rooms of freedom, could you confirm
that the config files on all your installations are identical?  IMO it
doesn't make sense to investigate further until you confirm that they
are identical.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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