[OS X TeX] MacTeX-2008; download sites and some answers

[Dr. Clea F. Rees]

> Given that I use other parts of ImageMagick besides 'convert' and that MacTeX 
> 2008 (and, presumably 2009 going foward) don't include those pieces, I've 
> decided to install ImageMagick via MacPorts.  This is all well and good, 
> MacTex need not install every useful but not TeX related piece of software.
>
> When I do install MacTeX 2008 in a few days time it will not, as Dr. Koch 
> pointed out, replace the existing (MacTeX 2007) installation of ImageMagick 
> (or will it?).  Rather it will (I think) simply replace 'convert' with the 
> statically linked binary referred to in the release notes.
>
> My question therefore is how do I uninstall the MacTeX 2007 ImageMagick so 
> that it won't conflict with my soon-to-be-installed MacPorts copy.

It won't conflict. MacPorts does not install software into /usr/local/.
It uses a separate tree for its packages under /opt. MacTeX  will not
touch anything there. You will, however, end up with more than one
version installed - the MacPorts one and the original one (with
replaced convert).

The only caveat would be if you deliberately configure MacPorts to
install software somewhere other than /opt. But you would certainly
know if you had done this.

> Normally, 
> I'm able to figure out how to uninstall stuff but ImageMagick with its many 
> bits and pieces spread out over many directories seems to a bit of a mystery.
>
> Uninstallation of unix software on my Mac has always perplexed me.  General 
> guidance in that regard would also be appreciated.

It depends. Often it depends on how you installed it. If you used
i-Installer to install ImageMagick (which was not part of MacTeX, I
think?), I'd suggest uninstalling it with i-Installer before installing
MacTeX 2008 if you do not want to keep it. Do it before running the
MacTeX installer because i-Installer may remove the MacTeX convert
command otherwise (I'm not sure about this but this is how I would do
it).

If you compiled from source, you can use "make uninstall" in the same
way you used "make install" (likely with sudo). Is that what you mean?

- cfr