[OS X TeX] sharing texmf trees between OS X and linux

[Thomas A.Schmitz]

> You can set up environment variables in ~/.bash_profile which point
> to the right directories. Under Linux, TeX assumes that HOMETEXMF is
> $HOME/texmf, but if you give it an explicit value
>
> 'export HOMETEXMF=/somewhere/else'
>
> then this new value overrides the builtin default. The latest TeX
> Live uses TEXMFHOME instead of HOMETEXMF.
>
> So you don't need symlinks, just environment variables.
>
> A word of warning:
> if your computer crashes under Linux while an hfs+ partition is
> `dirty', then Linux won't be able to fix it; it has to be done by
> OSX.
>
> Worse: apparently, Linux tests some flag which is not reset by
> OSX after it has repaired things. At the time, the only recourse was
> to backup, erase and restore the partition. But maybe this has been
> fixed.
>
> --  
> Siep Kroonenberg

Of course, that's a much easier solution, I should have thought of  
it! Unfortunately, it displays exactly the same behavior I had  
before. I set HOMETEXMF to /mnt/osx/Users/tas/Library/texmf. Here's  
an example of a file that is found:

% kpsewhich t-greek.tex
/mnt/osx/Users/tas/Library/texmf/tex/context/t-greek.tex

Now when I move the same file one directory deeper into /mnt/osx/ 
Users/tas/Library/texmf/tex/context/third, kpsewhich can't find it  
any more. The same file is found in my OS X installation in this  
location, and it is found if I just copy the texmf to my linux  
partition. So this seems to be a real shortcoming of the hfsplus  
driver (or a combination of kpsewhich + difficulties of spanning  
different file systems).

I could try and go the other route (see whether I can mount and see  
the linux texmf from OS X), but the software allowing this  
(extfsxmanager) is in a beta state for Tiger...

Thanks for your suggestions!

Thomas
------------------------- Info --------------------------
Mac-TeX Website: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
          & FAQ: http://latex.yauh.de/faq/
TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
List Archive: http://tug.org/pipermail/macostex-archives/