MacTeX Live 2022 Install Hassels

[Richard Koch]

Folks,

Karl Berry knows everything there is to know about TeX. It's useful to have such a person around.

However, the recent message from Karl in this thread is a little confusing, particularly when we come to the sentence  "Our generic install-tl script cannot assume (or know) that it is being called by the MacTeX installer."

This is confusing because the MacTeX installer never calls the Unix install-tl script.

There are two ways to install TeX Live 2022 on a Mac. One method is to download and install the MacTeX-2022 package. That is what Marek Stepanek actually did. When a user does this, they click one or two buttons that say "OK" and then installation occurs without any further action. The installer never asks questions. It just does its thing.

In this process, three things happen which users on other platforms sometimes find confusing, but they are completely natural on a Mac:

1) The installer creates a symbolic link /Library/TeX/texbin which points to the tex binary directory. Users don't have to use this link; it is there because most GUI TeX Software on the Mac (both open source and commercial) uses it to find TeX.

2) There is a way to determine whether letter size paper or A4 paper is being used on the Mac, and MacTeX looks up that information and automatically resets papersize in TeX.

3) On Linux and other machines, users control PATH with shell initialization software, so setting up PATH is a key step. On the Mac, the majority of users never use the command line, so the Mac has a default way to set up PATH in Terminal for casual users. This Apple method can be slightly modified, and MacTeX uses an Apple method to add /Library/TeX/texbin to the END of the default PATH used by Terminal. This means that if a casual user is told to run TeX from the command line, it will work. More technically minded users set up PATH on their own and our method doesn't interfere with them.

--------------

The second method of installing TeX on the Mac is to use the Unix install script. In that case there isn't any MacTeX. It is the Unix install script you all know all love, pure and simple.

We use this method on the DVD, because otherwise the DVD would have two complete copies of TeX Live.

Users of older machines also use it because the Unix install script is the only way to run the x86_64-darwinlegacy binaries. This year, for example, MacTeX works on macOS Big Sur and higher, but the Unix script works on Snow Leopard and above, so almost all Macs still running.

--------------

As everyone on this list knows, the install script ends by telling users to set up their PATH appropriately. That's fine. We have no desire to modify the install script in any way.

By now Mac users are familiar with the /Library/TeX/texbin link, and all of their GUI software has been configured to use it. So on both the DVD and on our web site, we provide a tiny extra install package at the very end. It runs on Snow Leopard and above, and the only thing it does is to create that symbolic link (and associated structure). It is called TeXDist-2022 and was mentioned by several people in the thread who assumed that Marek installed with the install script.

I suspect Marek's problems are easily solved, but won't know until we connect up.


Dick Koch

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/attachments/20220410/25616e45/attachment.html>