Texlive Path Setup

[Zdenek Wagner]

Hi,

there are many ways. My setup contains
/usr/local/texlive/current/bin/x86_64-linux almost at the beginning of
PATH (I have good reasons to override some binaries but it needs
caution). Here "current" is a symlink to a version which I want to
use. In addition, I have a script written in Tcl/Tk. It looks into
/usr/local/texlive/ and offers all directories representing years and
current. It then replaces the "current" element with the selected path
but for the current terminal only. Thus I have one version selected
for my general work but can switch to an older version or to a testing
version just in one terminal. And I can return to current if I like.
If a new version of TL comes and I want to switch to it as the
default, I just change the "current" symlink and it is recognized
immediatelly in all terminals unless they have a special version
activated temporarily. If you like, I can send you my Tcl/Tk script.

Zdeněk Wagner
http://ttsm.icpf.cas.cz/team/wagner.shtml

po 17. 1. 2022 v 20:46 odesílatel Nikos Platis <nplatis at gmail.com> napsal:
>
> Hi,
>
>>
>> Now I'm curious though:
>>
>> Is there any way to elegantly tell Linux which version of texlive to use?
>>
>> I know that some folks out there have multiple versions running. Like
>> one for each release or stuff like that.
>>
>> There has to be a better way then to just update your environment
>> variables every time....
>
>
> Yes there is another way, which I think is more elegant: in /usr/local/texlive you create a symlink named, e.g. "current", pointing to the year you want to use; also, to be on the safe side, you  rename your "texmf-local" folder to something corresponding to the texlive year, e.g. "texlive-local-2021", and make "texmf-local" a symlink to that folder. Then you put the "current" folder in your path.
>
> Now, when you want to switch to another year, you just change the symlinks to point to the other [year] and texmf-local-[year] folders respectively. There is no need to change your path anymore and the switch is instant!