[OS X TeX] How to save a complete TeX tree

[Maarten Sneep]

On 5-jan-2007, at 1:32, Bruno Voisin wrote:

> In order for the archive to be useful, I imagine the files  
> (especially the binaries) must be saved with correct ownership and  
> permission, and with symlinks preserved. Hence the following  
> question: what's the best way to ensure that ownership and  
> permission, and symlinks, will be correct within an archive:
>
> - Use Disk Utility to create a .dmg disk image of /usr/local/teTeX?
>
> - Use the Finder to create a .zip archive of /usr/local/teTeX?
>
> - Use in Terminal some combination of tar and gzip or bzip2 to  
> create an archive of /usr/local/teTeX? If so, which invocation?  
> Would the following work and preserve ownership and permission and  
> symlinking:
>
> 	tar zcvf ~/Desktop/Archived-teTeX /usr/local/teTeX
> 	tar jcvf ~/Desktop/Archived-teTeX /usr/local/teTeX
>
> where the first invocation would use gzip and the second bzip2?

I'd say the latter, in verbose form (see info tar for details):

tar --create --bzip2 --file=~/Desktop/Archived-teTeX.tar.bz2 /usr/ 
local/teTeX

tar will make all paths relative, meaning that the paths are stored  
relative to usr/local/teTeX, rather than /usr etc. I would recommend  
to first change to the directory /usr/local and then issue the  
archive command:

cd /usr/local/ ; tar --create --bzip2 --file=~/Desktop/Archived- 
teTeX.tar.bz2 teTeX/

Extracting is then a matter of going to /usr/local, and extracting  
with, like this:
cd /usr/local/ ; tar --extract --bzip2 --file=~/Desktop/Archived- 
teTeX.tar.bz2

HTMH,

Maarten

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