[OS X TeX] OS X TeX newbie needs help installing TeX on non-boot volume

[Rowland McDonnell]

> I don't want to participate in the weird anti-unix flame war that this 
> message seems to want to start,

Umm.  If you mean me, I think you misunderstand.

I'm merely disagreeing with the wildly overenthusiastic Unix fans and
pointing out that the old MacOS was for some of us a much more reliable
and friendly operating system - I don't mean the execrable MacOS 9 (for
which I do not have words to describe, so unreliably did it perform
here), but System 7 and earlier (I've never used MacOS 8 so cannot
comment on it).

That is not flaming Unix - just pointing out that there are different
experiences and never mind that The Steve and his cohorts says
everything's better now: it ain't.  Is it flaming to engage in a
disagreement?  I don't think so.

> but here is a word of advice:
> 
> If you make /usr/local a symbolic link to some other directory (as I
> am doing usually, too), then after each software installation using
> one of the GUI installers, please check if your symbolic link is
> still there or if it has been removed and replaced by a real
> directory. 

Ouch.  Thank you for this tip.

>The Apple 
> installer is known to do this occasionally if it is used to install 
> things in /usr/local, even Apple softwareupdate has done it once or 
> twice.

Apple installers are often very antisocial in my experience.

[snip]

> BTW, you can very well replace /usr/X11R6 by a symbolic link, too, but 
> the same advice is in order; you shouldn't do it if later you want to 
> use Apple's installer to install things into /usr/X11R6.

Righto.  I'd been meaning to leave the X11 stuff where it is, on the
grounds that moving any of that is *bound* to cause trouble.

Rowland.
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