Texlive Path Setup

[Georg Rast]

Hey Everyone,

  Thanks for the input. It sounds really neat. I will definitely try that.

@Zdeněk Wagner:

I would love to take a look at it. Haven't used Tcl before, but i should
be able to translate it into a shellscript.


Greetings George


 > 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!