[tex-live] FInding locally installed packages in different environments

[Urs Liska]

Hi all,

there's an issue I've come across occasionally, and I'd like to clarify 
this once and for all ...

I have installed texlive-full on Debian, actually I've dragged this 
along through a number of installations while keeping my home partition, 
so maybe there's something I have done in the past to make things "work 
for me".

My $TEXMFHOME is ~/texmf, and I have a number of custom packages I use 
and make available through this $TEXMFHOME.

However, since I maintain my stuff with Git I prefer having the actual 
code sitting below ~/git/latex/<packages>, and I have 
~/texmf/tex/latex/latex-git as a symlink to ~/git/latex.

Through this LaTeX finds any resources in and below ~/git/latex, which 
is what I want - so it "works for me". It also has always worked when I 
started using a fresh distribution (but always Debian-based distros if 
that matters).

The problem is that collaborators don't always seem to be able to follow 
instructions like:

  * look for or create and cd into ~/texmf/tex/latex
  * create a symlink with
    ln -s /path/to/our/project/latex-resources
  * try compiling the document

I read about having to use texhash and/or mktexlsr - once or after every 
changes to ~/texmf - but I don't seem to have to do that on my computer. 
Is the behaviour of finding packages in the "home" tree depending on the 
LInux distro or the way how TeXLive is installed (manual/package)? Do 
the differen LaTeX engines behave differently in this regard?

Currently I have a contributor using Gentoo Linux with texlive-full 
installed from the distro's repositories. He has added the symlink to 
our project's latex directory but when compiling (with lualatex 
filename) it chokes upon not finding the document class (in that directory).

I would really like to know what steps have to be taken and if they 
differ in any way depending on the environment. It's not only that I 
need to get this contributor up and running, but I need to write a CG 
that will free me from unnecessary hassles with future contributors.

Thanks for any clarification
Urs

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