creating MacTeX links to MacPorts TeXLive

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Oct 9, 2010, at 18:24, Faisal Moledina wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 5:53 PM, Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign at macports.org> wrote:
>> 
>> On Oct 9, 2010, at 16:13, Faisal Moledina wrote:
>> 
>>> It would work much better if the link was
>>> /usr/texbin -> /opt/local/libexec/texlive/texbin as you suggest, Ryan.
>>> It would certainly be most efficient if it were done at the port
>>> install level so I'll go ahead and request a modification. I realize
>>> now that it would be even more specific if we could extend this
>>> treatment for texlive man and info pages.
>> 
>> Does the System Preferences panel you referred to already do that? What names does it use for these directories? (texman?)
> 
> Man files are ultimately located at /usr/texbin/man.

.....Ah. Then /usr/texbin is not the bin directory, it's the prefix. So you'd really have /usr/texbin/bin being a symlink to wherever the TeX binaries are, and /usr/texbin/man (or perhaps more correctly /usr/texbin/share/man) for the manpages, /usr/texbin/info (or perhaps /usr/texbin/share/info) for the infopages.

> However, the man
> link would end up being /usr/texbin/man -> /opt/local/share/man since
> that's where all texlive port man pages are located. Not sure how info
> ultimately gets processed. At least in the postflight script it is
> linked this way (from the pastie link):
> 
> /Library/TeX/Distributions/.FactoryDefaults/MacPorts-TeXLive/Contents/Info
> -> /opt/local/share/info
> /Library/TeX/Distributions/.FactoryDefaults/MacPorts-TeXLive/Contents/Man
> -> /opt/local/share/man
> ...
> /Library/TeX/Distributions/.FactoryDefaults/MacPorts-TeXLive/Contents/Programs/i386
> -> /opt/local/bin
> /Library/TeX/Distributions/.FactoryDefaults/MacPorts-TeXLive/Contents/Programs/powerpc
> -> /opt/local/bin
> /Library/TeX/Distributions/.FactoryDefaults/MacPorts-TeXLive/Contents/Programs/ppc
> -> /opt/local/bin
> 
> Then all the texmf links come. On my machine, using MacTeX 2010, these
> links translate to:
> /usr/texbin -> /Library/TeX/Distributions/.DefaultTeX/Contents/Programs/i386
> /usr/texbin/man -> /Library/TeX/Distributions/.DefaultTeX/Contents/Man
> 
> .DefaultTeX is the currently chosen TeX distribution in the Preference
> Pane (I think so, although it's not symlinked). MacTeX puts an entry
> in /etc/paths.d/TeX and /etc/manpaths.d/TeX for the above paths,
> respectively.
> 
> So perhaps having another directory in /opt/local where texlive ports
> symlink their man pages to will be sufficient.

Now, hold on. Putting an entry into /etc/paths.d and /etc/manpaths.d *appends* to those paths; it does not prepend. In this case, is it a problem to just use /opt/local/bin, /opt/local/share/man, /opt/local/share/info as you've been doing?

You originally wrote:


On Oct 8, 2010, at 13:53, Faisal Moledina wrote:

> Since /usr/texbin is
> typically recommended to be prepended to $PATH, this would cause
> issues for people who do not want MacPorts binaries to take precedence
> over system ones


The user either needs /usr/texbin in their PATH, or they have it in /etc/paths.d; it's superfluous to do both.