[OS X TeX] problem with tlmgr gui

[Dr. Clea F. Rees]

On 10/09/08, you seem to have written:

>
> Am 10.09.2008 um 20:08 schrieb Dr. Clea F. Rees:
>
>> On 10/09/08, you seem to have written:
>> 
>>> Hi all,
>>> 
>>> I have now installed MacTex2008 with the GUIs and TK. I see the TK 
>>> directory in /Library/Perl/5.8.6/darwin-thread-multi-2level/
>>> I have the binaries in usr/local/bin
>>> Still, envoking tlmgr --gui in Terminal.app with X11 running does not 
>>> start the GUI but gives me:
>>> 
>>> Cannot load Tk, thus the GUI cannot be started!
>>> The Perl/Tk module is not shipped with the TeX Live installation.
>>> You have to install it to get tlmgr GUI running. See
>>> http://tug.org/texlive/distro.html for more details.
>>> 
>>> The command line tool tlmgr seems to work fine.
>>> This is my Path:
>>> /usr/local/Trolltech/bin:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/texbin
>>> 
>>> Could it be that MacPorts is the culprit?  I do not have tk from MacPorts 
>>> but a Perl 5.8 installation.
>> 
>> Yes. MacPorts is the "culprit". I think so, anyway. Here's why:
>> - you have the MacPorts perl installed. This means (given the way
>>  MacPorts configures the path) that the MacPorts perl will take
>>  precedence over the system perl. That is "perl" calls
>>  /opt/local/bin/perl. (To confirm this try "which perl".)
>> - any perl is configured to look for modules (if that's the term) in
>>  certain specific places. The system perl looks in
>>  /System/Library/Perl/5.8.x and /Library/Perl/5.8.x, I think. But
>>  MacPorts perl will look somewhere else - I'm not sure where but
>>  presumably somewhere under /opt.
>> - so MacTeX Tk installer has installed the module for the system perl
>>  but your default perl doesn't have Tk installed. Hence the complaint.
>> 
>> To test this, try temporarily setting path to something different e.g.
>> "export PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/texbin:/usr/bin:/bin" for example (in
>> bash). Then check the version of perl using "which perl" and try running 
>> tlmgr with the gui option.
>> 
>> If that works, you have a few more permanent options. For example, you
>> could change your PATH more permanently. I don't know how that might
>> affect MacPorts, though. Or you could use MacPorts to install the
>> Perl/Tk module.
>> 
>> If you need the MacPorts version of perl, your best bet might be
>> installing the Tk module for that perl, too.
>> 
>> If it doesn't work, I'm likely just wrong about the cause of the
>> problem.
>> 
>> - cfr
>
> Hello,
>
> thanks for your reply. In the meantime I found your posts about your problems 
> with tlmgr on this list. After deciding to get rid of MacPorts Perl and 
> facing a nightmare of dependencies I just decided to get rid of that software 
> once and for all. So currently I am deleting tons files. My only question is: 
> opt/local will still be in my path, even after that directory will be deleted 
> - is that a problem? Should I modify my Path? If so, how?

It won't stop it working. The system will just find nothing under
/opt/local/bin etc. since the paths won't exist. (I assume you're
deleting MacPorts altogether?) To save the system looking in
non-existent places and to tidy things up, it would probably be good to
modify your path.

If you are using bash (the default shell), look in your home directory
for .bashrc or .bash_profile. You'll need to use Terminal's "ls -l"
command since they won't show up in Finder. One of them likely contains
the MacPorts modifications to your path and you can edit the file so
that the path is set as you wish.

It _might_ make modifications to the configuration files in /etc. Does
anybody know if that's the case? I don't use MacPorts myself so I'm not
sure where it makes all its changes...

- cfr