[XeTeX] XeTeX compile error in Gentoo Linux

Ralf Stubner ralf.stubner at physik.uni-erlangen.de
Mon May 29 15:07:00 CEST 2006


Jonathan Kew <jonathan_kew at sil.org> writes:

> Note how pdftex has a compiled-in default search location of /var/lib/ 
> texmf/web2c, but in xetex the corresponding location is /usr/share/ 
> texmf/web2c.

I would guess that /var/lib/texmf/ is explicitly added in the gentoo
builds of teTeX. I find it difficult to imagine how the web2c configure
scripts could pickup this variable all by itself.

> A "quick fix" might be to create a symlink so that these locations  
> are actually the same, assuming /usr/share/texmf/web2c doesn't  
> already exist with different contents on your system:
>
> 	ln -s /var/lib/texmf/web2c /usr/share/texmf/web2c
>
> or even perhaps make the symlink for the texmf level rather than web2c.

On Debian, /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf is a symlink to the
/etc/texmf/texmf.cnf. In addition, Debian uses a shared libkpathsea such
that tex at all don't know about such compiletime defaults. I haven't
tried building XeTeX that way, though, and I don't know if that is also
done on Gentoo.

> The real question, though, is why the xetex configuration gets this  
> wrong, giving you incorrect definitions in paths.h during the build.  

Maybe because you are searching for 'hyphen.tex', which is probably
below /usr/share/texmf. I think XeTeX needs compiletime defaults only
for finding texmf.cnf. After that, the paths defined in there should be
used. So it might make sense to use 'kpsewhich texmf.cnf' instead. But
maybe the setup used by Gentoo with texmf.cnf in /var/lib/texmf is
simply broken?

cheerio
ralf



More information about the XeTeX mailing list