[OS X TeX] MacTeX - a few questions

[Daniel Becker]

>> **** I found out that the folder Applications/TeX is not owned by  
>> myself but by the system. The account I am using is an  
>> administrator account, but still I am not allowed to modify the  
>> content of Applications/TeX. Is this how it should be? If yes - why?
>
> I can now explain this. Thanks to Roussanka Loukanova for providing  
> the crucial information.
>
> MacTeX-2007 sets the permissions and owner of /Applications/TeX to
>
> 	drwxrwxr-x    8 root  admin     272 Feb 24 09:45 TeX
>
> so users in the admin group can modify the contents. Thus Daniel's  
> problem wasn't caused by MacTeX.
>
> Instead, it was caused by i-Installer when it installed gwTeX.  
> Gerben installs a small optional application in /Applications/TeX  
> during this installation. Just now I blew away /Applications/TeX  
> and /usr/local/gwTeX and reinstalled using i-Installer; sure  
> enough, the new TeX folder had permissions
>
> 	drwxr-xr-x.
>
> MacTeX doesn't change the permissions of /Applications/TeX if it  
> already exists. The MacTeX package for gwTeX doesn't install  
> anything in /Applications/TeX. Thus I conjecture that everyone  
> reporting this permissions problem used i-Installer to obtain gwTeX  
> sometime in the past.

...., ah ok. I installed Gerben's gwTeX (and will continue to do so).  
Maybe he finds the time to fix this, but it is not a problem once you  
know reclaiming ownership doesn't destroy anything.

Thanks for the explanation.

And yes, a gui (a configure button in the texdistribution panel) for  
doing something similar to i-installers configuration phase would be  
great. Sorry that I can't help...

Daniel


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