[texhax] Today's binaries on old texmf trees

Alex Scorpan scorpan at msp.org
Sun Nov 3 22:47:56 CET 2013


In an attempt at developing a long-term preservation strategy for old source, I've been trying to force pdflatex from TeX Live 2013 to run on top of packages from TeX Live 2008.  So, before I call the TL13 psdlatex, I set env variables like

  export TEXMFDIST=/usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-dist  

(just in case)

  export TEXMFMAIN=/usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf:/usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-dist

(since texmf/ and texmf-dist/ were merged in TL2013)

However, when I call the TL13 pdflatex, it always prefers to load the files

  color.cfg
  graphics.cgf
  hyperref.cfg

from 2013/texmf-dist/tex/latex/latexconfig rather than from 2008/texmf/tex/latex/config.

To further add to the confusion, if I call the TL13 binary but set TEXMF* variables to point at TL12, then these files are taken (as wished) from TL12's tree.  If I call the TL12 binary but set TEXMF* to point at TL08, then these files are taken (as wished) from TL08's tree.


Thank you,

Alex


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