[OS X TeX] installing from TeXLive

[Gerben Wierda]

On Nov 17, 2006, at 03:19, Enrico Franconi wrote:

> Oh, oh. This is bad. The i-installer did modify some of my system 
> files?

It did and it is not bad. It enables or disables TeX (and man for TeX) 
on the command line in a standard unix way and it only influences the 
command line not any other application.

> What about all the discussions about the security of modifying the 
> environment.plist?

For one, the TeX i-Package puts the new path entries at the end, 
preventing the trojan exploit that is possible when they are inserted 
at the beginning. Secondly, environment.plist influences all apps, not 
just the command line. Hence, someone instructing you as a fix for some 
program to set TEXINPUTS in environment.plist may cause havoc with 
running TeXShop. Etc.

> Modifying a system-wide profile having a global import seems to me bad.

Basically, when you want to install something for all users, there is 
no real alternative. But there is "global for all users" and "global 
for all apps". The TeX i-Package was intended for the first.

> Anyway, I will revert as root those files to their original version.

Or uninstall the TeX i-Package, which will do that for you.

> Question: is there an uninstall option in the i-installer? How can a 
> normal user without cli expertise revert the situation and switch 
> correctly to TeXlive?

The TeX i-Package has a configuration option (expert install or 
separate config run) to enable the CLI. On uninstall, the CLI-settings 
(and do not forget the manpath settings) are removed.

G

> cheers
> --e.
>
> On 16 Nov 2006, at 09:03, Claus Gerhardt wrote:
>
>> Enrico,
>>
>> If ~/Library/texmf still works for you without having installed a 
>> symlink of it in ~/ then I am afraid your are still running one of 
>> Gerben's installation. You must rid of Gerben's path first, see below
>>
>>  Your path has to be incorporated in /private /etc/profile (bash
>> shell) and in /private /etc/csh.login (c shell).
>>
>> The modification of the profile would look like (for powerpc)
>>
>> ## TeX modifications start at Fri Nov  3 17:39:47 CET 2006 (must be
>> Gerben)
>> ## Do not remove the previous line
>> if [ `whoami` != "root" ]
>> then
>>    PATH="$PATH:/usr/local/texlivesymlink/bin/powerpc-darwin"
>>    export PATH
>> fi
>> ## Do not remove the next line
>> ## TeX modifications end at Fri Nov  3 17:39:47 CET 2006 (must be
>> Gerben)
>>
>>
>> Either you enter your correct path, or you make a symlink to 
>> texlivesymlink of the corresponding tex folder,  in your case 2005 I 
>> guess.
>>
>> For those of you who now think that a texlive installation is very 
>> complicated, this "complication" is only due to Gerben's modification 
>> of the profiles in /etc. I guess that without such a previous 
>> modification TeXLive's guidance for setting the path to the new 
>> binaries would have worked.
>>
>> Claus
>>
>>
>> On Nov 16, 2006, at 3:54, Enrico Franconi wrote:
>>
>>> This is amazing, it took 10 minutes to install it; and it works!
>>> After having modified my PATH variable to contain the new texlive 
>>> binaries, I just run install-tl.sh (keeping all default parameters - 
>>> I did not change the base path), and texconfig-sys paper a4: 
>>> everything works fine after. No parameter modified. And I still have 
>>> my personal texmf in Library/; I did not need to move it in ~/
>>>
>>> thanks - now we have a bright future.
>>> --e.
>>
>> ------------------------- 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/
>>
>
> ------------------------- 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/
>
>

------------------------- 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/