creating MacTeX links to MacPorts TeXLive

[Keith J. Schultz]

Hi Dan,

	First off. I just use the MacTeX distribution directly.
	I am a casual MacPorts users. 
Am 04.11.2010 um 20:33 schrieb Dan Ports:

> On Thu, Nov 04, 2010 at 09:39:58AM +0100, Keith J. Schultz wrote:
>> 	I have a few points question:
>> 		1) The tex-live 2009 port shoud not be upgraded when installing tex-live 2010
>> 			a) they are so to say two different aninmals
>> 			b) Tex-live distributions 2009 and 2010 can co-exist
> 
> Although it is possible to have two different versions of TeX Live
> installed, it would require some work to keep them separate, and we
> haven't done that with the texlive ports.
	I am aware of the complexity of the problem/s. I do not know if know if
	tex-live can have multiple distributions on a unix based machine. (Yes, the Mac
	is Unix under the hood, but …! You know what I mean).

> [snip, snip]

> Generally speaking, MacPorts tries to avoid having multiple versions of
> ports unless there's a really compelling reason to have more than one.
> I think in general texlive users do just want to have the latest stable
> version installed, and automatically upgrade when a new one is
> available. I wasn't aware of anyone wanting to keep old versions of
> texlive insatlled -- if you do, I'd be interested to know why.

	I do not I have a need for it, but there are users that do, for whatever reasons.

> 
>> 		2) Updating of the Tex-Live distribution is done via tlmgr (TexLive manager)
>> 			Is it supported or will it work with the MacPorts version?
> 
> No -- if texlive is installed through MacPorts, it needs to be updated
> via MacPorts. We don't support (and don't install) tlmgr because having
> another package manager in use can cause problems as they will  interfere
> with each other.
	Yes, Ports SHOULD be updated via MacPorts. Yet, I have check my MacTeX distribution
	and the binaries do not have seemed to have be changed!! Yet, using the TeX Live Utility
	(GUI to tlmgr) I have notice that scripts and packages are updated daily!!!
	In effect this means that users are stuck with a Tex-Live distribution that is FROZEN in time
	as far as PACKAGES are concerned. There is quite alot of development going on in the unicode
	support in TeX, especially Xe(La)TeX, Lua, Context, etc. I would think tlmgr support of the utmost
	importance. 
	Probably, there could be support for tlmgr, once support is there for the TeX Distribution Preference Pane.
	There seems to already some support for MacPorts in it. 
	
> 
>> 		3) Is the Tex Distribution Preference Pane supported?
>> 		        a) refers partly to 1b
> 
> Not yet, but thanks to Faisal Moledina's work it should soon be
> possible to select MacPorts TeXLive from the MacTeX TeX Distribution
> prefpane. See http://trac.macports.org/ticket/26784

> [snip, snip]

>> 		5) There is the BasicTex distribution for TeXLive. Maybe that is what you are looking for
>> 		     to divide TeX up.
> 
> Not really -- we already have most of texlive divided into separate
> ports such that you can install whatever combination of collections you
> want. It looks like BasicTeX would be the combination of
> texlive-{basic,latex,latex-recommended,context,metapost,pstricks,xetex}
> which is actually not that far off from our default texlive installation
> (texlive +medium). 
	O.K. Thought it might help. My boboo.

	regards
		Keith.