[tex-live] (no subject)

[Norbert Preining]

On Sat, 22 Sep 2018, Michael Shell wrote:
> What I mean is, a user is running MS Windows with a FAT32 filesystem,
> and they want to install Tex Live on it using the DVD. They can do
> that, right?

Windows part of TeX Live of course doesn't have symlinks! And if you
select *additional* unix archs for installation that will probably break
on FAT32. But normal Windows installation of course works without any
problems.

> But, I do see a big problem with regard to running directly on a USB drive
> (The "Live" part of TeX Live) on filesystems without symlinks. I suppose
> the linked files would just have to be duplicated, and then there would
> have to be a data file that contains all the link information. During
> installation to filesystem that does have symlink ability, the duplicate
> ("link") files are simply replaced with symlinks instead of being copied
> as-is. Well, something like that.

Or, on the USB all the symlinks are replaced by the actual files, and on
the next update with tlmgr they are converted to links.

But also this is problematic, because some scripts *might* use readlink
etc to find the position of the real script and use the derived
directory, which would break again.

Best

Norbert

--
PREINING Norbert                               http://www.preining.info
Accelia Inc.     +    JAIST     +    TeX Live     +    Debian Developer
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