[tex-live] texinfo not happy with texlive not producing log?

[Liviu Ionescu]

> On 5 Nov 2016, at 17:08, Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at> wrote:
> 
>> from https://github.com/sourcegraph/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Homebrew/blacklist.rb
>> 
>>  when "tex", "tex-live", "texlive", "latex" then <<-EOS.undent
>>    Installing TeX from source is weird and gross, requires a lot of patches,
>>    and only builds 32-bit (and thus can't use Homebrew deps on Snow Leopard.)
>>    We recommend using a MacTeX distribution: https://www.tug.org/mactex/
>>    EOS
> 
> This is complete rubbish, I cannot even imagine who conjured this up
> in a state of complete drunkness!
> 
> Any reasonable person can look into the bin directory and see that there
> are definitely many different 64bit arch files.

I'm convinced you are right, but, on the other hand, if you look at the MacPorts install scripts, they are **very** complicated, beyond normal user comprehension.

>> - copied the texlive.profile from MacTex
> 
> Not so good without adaption
> 
>> - edited it to use my local paths
> 
> You should have edited a bit more ...

certainly, but, not knowing what I'm doing, I was a bit afraid of generating an incomplete setup.

any suggestions are welcome.

> 
>> after a while (a long while),
> 
> Yes, because about 4G have been downloaded from a CTAN mirror.

I noticed. not good.

> 
>> the install was ready (I'm convinced there are lots of options that I'll never use; btw, is there any documentation for the various options in the profile?)
> 
> Not really, because the idea is to use the install-tl script interactively.

this idea is certainly useful to those who know what it is going on. since I'm not one of the blessed, I would probably have answered Yes to all questions, and got even more, if this is possible.

>> then I removed the /Library/TeX folder,
> 
> Not created by the install script but someone else.
> 
>> the /usr/local/texlive folder, 
> 
> Neither that has been created unless you specified this location as target.

> 
>> and lots of unwanted things from /usr/local/bin (I hate when tools used during my builds are in /usr/local, because I never know which tools the builds really use).
> 
> Hmmm, you have 
> 	option_path 0
> in your profile. Are you sure that this file in /usr/local/bin were
> generated by the installer? It *should*not*. If option_path 0 is set,
> then no adjustment is done whatsoever.

ah, sure, they were created by MacTex.

the story started some time ago, by installing TeX via MacPorts. I first tried the texlive-basic, but my builds failed. I tried several iterations to add more packages, but the builds continued to fail. quite annoyed, I finally installed texlive-full, and my builds passed.

recently I decided to give up using MacPorts and migrate to Homebrew. since Homebrew does not directly support Tex Live, I had to use the 'casked' version, which installs MacTex and adds some links.

I was horrified by the pollution degree, and this is how I reached here. (MacPorts installed everything in the desired location).


> run the installer once interactively to see what you are
> talking about in the profile.

I did. I discovered that some paths should point to the local $HOME folder.

otherwise I disabled the Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages, and saved a few MB. big deal!

the main problem is that I have no idea what TeX features people use in the manuals I need to generate during the builds I run.

I also have TeX installed in the Debian Docker images I use for the builds. in Docker I Installed texlive-full too (with "apt-get -y install texinfo texlive"), but the result was shorter, about 2 GB if I remember right; I'd be happy to identify the extra packages I selected this time, and remove them.


regards,

Liviu


p.s. as a personal remark, the interactive install is definitely not for faint-hearted 'civilians'...