[texhax] trouble with texhash and pst-algparser.pro

Thomas Schneider schneidt at mail.nih.gov
Tue Feb 22 12:02:06 CET 2011


Reinhard:

Thanks for the quick response.

>  > sudo /usr/local/texlive/2010/bin/uniersal-darwin/texhash
> 
> Never call TeX programs with an absolute path.

I generally don't.  However, having moved the 2008 directory somewhere
else, I needed to be sure I was running the new version.  Are you
saying I should have done this:

cd /usr/local/texlive/2010/bin/uniersal-darwin/
sudo texhash

?  I don't see how that would have made much difference.

>  > 1. Could the MacTex installation do a texhash for users?
> 
> This is not necessary unless a particular user has TEXMFHOME in TEXMFDBS.

I don't have those variables in my env.  I have TEXINPUTS pointing to
inside my powerdot directory.

>  > 2. Could the texhash be smarter and look for the most recent version
>  > instead of the oldest one?
> 
> No.  That would mess up the whole system.  texhash updates the TeX
> system which is found first in PATH.

>  > Why was pst-algparser.pro "suddenly" not found?  Oddly, this file is
>  > in the correct location in the 2008 distribution.
> 
> Are you using TL-2010 or TL-2008?

According to my log file, I am now using TL-2010.  But I moved the old
versions to a new directory, /usr/local/texlive/old, so I looked into
that.  The file pst-algparser.pro is intact there.

I get the sense that a user is supposed to know a lot about the guts
of where things are, where things were and how the entire system
works.  The problem appears to be that I had previous systems, 2005
and 2008.  I don't see why a new installation should use the old
stuff.  I expect that when I install a program I will from then on
have the new version and that I won't have to do anything.  At minimum
the installation could warn the user to read some page somewhere.

Regards,

Tom

  Thomas D. Schneider, Ph.D.
  National Institutes of Health
  National Cancer Institute
  Gene Regulation and Chromosome Biology Laboratory
  Molecular Information Theory Group
  Frederick, Maryland  21702-1201
  schneidt at mail.nih.gov
  toms at alum.mit.edu (permanent)
  http://alum.mit.edu/www/toms (permanent)


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