[OS X TeX] Installing packages

[Norman Gall]

On 7 Jun 2004, at 09:25hrs, Thomas Schröder wrote:

> Well, since CTAN files can't be easily nudged into some automatic 
> installation scheme and MikTeX has its own packaging system, why don't 
> we as a TeX community come up with one, too? How about we created a 
> little group of volunteers, maybe 10-15 people, where everybody was 
> assigned a small part of the contrib directory on CTAN/macros/latex. 
> Everybody could then work out how each package was to be installed. I 
> think most packages are really very straightforward to install: latex 
> *.ins, latex *.dtx, put the *.sty in a macros directory, put *.dvi in 
> a doc directory etc. These could be marked as 'easy' or something like 
> that i.e. they could be automatically installed. For the rest, 
> packages would be nice. It would be a bit of work in the beginning, 
> but certainly worthwhile. Count me in as one of the 
> would-be-volunteers :-)

Me too.

However, just as something off the top of my head, why bother 
installing into different places when the tree affords people the 
ability to see all of the files for a package?

I simply unpack packages into ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex/<packagename>; 
the whole thing. I never have any troubles with it and upgrading a 
package is simple: delete all the contents of the folder, move the .ins 
and .dtx into it, and unpack.

Norm Gall

-- 
"Battles are won by slaughter and manoeuvre. The greater the general, 
the
  more he contributes in manoeuvre, the less he demands in slaughter."
                                                  - Winston Churchill

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