[OS X TeX] Installing packages

[Joseph C. Slater]

On Jun 3, 2004, at 6:53 PM, Gerben Wierda wrote:

> I wonder how MikTeX does this. After all, TeX/CTAN/LaTeX packages are 
> far from standardised in how they should be processed for install.
>
> If there is some system to it, I could implement this.
>
> G
I would suppose that a good start would be to copy the directory 
wholesale and latex any file with the extension .ins, then latex any 
file with the extension .tex, bibtex it, makeindex, and latex it again 
(is that twice?), to generate the documentation. That would work for 
the vast majority. But, if you can automate this, you are a better 
programmer than I. Oh, wait. I think you've already established that. 
;)

You might ask the MikTeX folks. They obviously know how to do this. The 
source code is also freely available:
http://www.miktex.org/sourcecode.html

If you do this, it might as well be done in a way that works with 
TeXLive. I wonder if the folks that generate that would be interested 
in adding that to the TeXLive project. I can't imagine that they 
haven't thought of it.
Joe


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