[OS X TeX] Keeping TeX installations synchronized between machines

[Herbert Schulz]

On Jan 4, 2010, at 8:51 PM, Alain Schremmer wrote:

> 
> On Jan 4, 2010, at 9:27 PM, Herbert Schulz wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Jan 4, 2010, at 7:17 PM, Chris Goedde wrote:
>> 
>>> On Jan 4, 2010, at 5:17 PM, M. Tamer Özsu wrote:
>>> 
>>>> I use Dropbox for this purpose. Works like a charm.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Can you elaborate? What part(s) do you synchronize, and how? What do you do when you don't have internet access?
>>> 
>>> The problem from my point of view is the way various things are scattered in different folders. I use rsync to synchronize my home and work desktops, which works great, but for TeX I have to specify a number of different places to synchronize.
>>> 
>>> Maybe this would be a good request for the MacTeX people: Would it be possible to organize all the user-specific files for everything in MacTeX in one place, like ~/Library/MacTeX or ~/Documents/MacTex? This would require some coordination with some developers, but I think it would be a great feature.
>>> 
>>> Chris
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> Howdy,
>> 
>> Somehow I don't thing ``requiring'' people to put there personal work in certain directories will get a good reception. I you want to do that go ahead and do that. There already are certain directories supported by TeX Live that have a fixed structure but user files are another thing altogether.
> 
> To an extent, I absolutely and totally agree: What kind of files we create, what we intend to do with them, etc would seem to dictate where we put them and that couldn't be the same for everybody.
> 
> But I had understood Goedde to mean files such as style sheets and fonts.
> 

Howdy,

There already are standard places for packages and fonts defined by the TeX Live tree structure:
1)for single project use place the package file(s) in the same directory as the document to be processed (will not work for fonts)-or-
2)for personal use place the package files in the .../tex/latex/ directory or sub-directory of that in the personal tree, ~/Library/texmf/. Fonts go into the proper sub-directories of the .../fonts/... directory of the personal tree; although I suggest that fonts are always installed in the local system tree (see (3) below -or-
3)for system wide (i.e., all users of a given system) use things go into the proper sub-directories (as above) of the /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local/ tree. For items placed in this tree you MUST run

sudo mktexlsr

(or 

sudo texhash

which is a synonym) so that TeX knows the existence of the files --- not necessary with additions to your personal tree. For fonts added you must also let TeX know about the map files by running

sudo updmap-sys --enable Map mapfile.map

for the mapfile.map for the font.
4)all other trees are part of the basic TeX distribution and shouldn't be touched!

Update the basic TeX system (2009 at this time---earlier systems are no longer able to update) using tlmr, or, under OS X 10.5 and later, use the TeX Live Utility that comes with MacTeX-2009. Do that on all systems and that part of your TeX system will be up to date.

> Indeed, more than once, I copied my "work folder" onto my laptop only to find later on that I had missed some style sheet or the other. Even though I keep everything that has to do with a given book, tex files and Co, but also intaglio and pdf files, all in one big folder, easy to backup and to move from one place to another. But style sheets are easy to forget.
> 
> I don't use special fonts but I can see forgetting to take the fonts too, particularly as my understanding is that they are well hidden.
> 
> So, I think that Goedde has a point.
> 
> Regards
> --schremmer

Personal files are just that and no-one can give general rules about them.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)