[OS X TeX] OSX-ifying TeX even more

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 18 janv. 07 à 14:35, Roberto Avanzi a écrit :

> On 18 Jan 2007, at 13:08, Peter Dyballa wrote:
>
>> Am 18.01.2007 um 12:57 schrieb Roberto Avanzi:
>>
>>> Pro and con anyone?
>>
>> Apple developed some recommendations how to handle and where to  
>> place different kinds of "bundles." UNIX has a longer history.
>>
>> To sing it with Marx: I'm against it!
>
> Yes, but the internal structure of these directories would be
> identical, and there would be hard or soft links to the directories
> in the bundle - both worlds would then be respected.  The unix
> tools would _see_ no difference at all,
> and the data would be stored in a way that survives complex
> transitions.

Count me among the opposants as well. OS X brings valuable  
clarification and organization to the Unix pieces it is based upon,  
and by breaking that organization you would lose a lot.

On OS X, applications should go inside /Applications, libraries, back- 
ends and so forth inside /Library, and for those parts that come  
unchanged from the Unix world inside the invisible directories /bin, / 
usr/bin and so forth, defined partly by guidelines dating back to the  
origins of Unix and partly by usage. And don't forget that numerous  
Unix applications use hard-coded paths, based on these guidelines and  
usage.

/Users is supposed to be for user-specific files, including /Users/ 
Shared for files to be shared among users, but the operation of the  
OS and applications should be completely independent from the /Users  
area, except for personal preference and configuration files,  
personal fonts, personal TeX additions, all inside ~/Library.

That's why I don't use Migration Assistant, and reinstall all the  
programs one by one, given many of them rely on components located  
inside /Library or in the invisible Unix directories. Accordingly you  
need to reinstall these programs from their original installer  
packages, which put everything at the proper place.

You can, of course, store these installer packages and all the  
customizations you may have added inside /Users/Shared, and reinstall  
from there. Personally I store all these installer packages and  
customizations on an external hard drive, where I keep the packages  
as up to date as possible, and from time to time I burn that  
repository on a DVD.

Bruno Voisin

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