creating MacTeX links to MacPorts TeXLive

[Faisal Moledina]

>> 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.

No, weirdly enough, /usr/texbin is where binaries are located, and
within that is a man dir. I've just emailed MacTeX to help clarify the
final path structure.

>> 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're right, it is appended by default. In my own .profile, I
prepended /usr/texbin in order to use latex, etc from there. I've done
that in TextMate as well.

>
> 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.
>

Ack, I do have it twice in my path as a result. This is messier than I
expected at first. MacTeX does recommend prepending PATH with
/usr/texbin if you use Fink or MacPorts, which makes sense to me. The
paths.d is the default approach for non-Fink or MacPorts MacTeX users.

Faisal