[OS X TeX] Re: [tex-live] use of x86_64-darwin only in mactex 2010

[Herbert Schulz]

On Jun 20, 2010, at 12:20 PM, Victor Ivrii wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 20, 2010 at 12:58 PM, Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at> wrote:
>> Hi Emanuele,
>> 
>> please keep questions on the texlive mailing list, so many more
>> people can answer.
>> 
>> On So, 20 Jun 2010, Emanuele Rodo wrote:
>>> I wonder if it is possible to only use x86_64 packages rather than e.g.
>>> having something like -
>> 
>>> 
>>> Updating dvipdfm
>>> Updating dvipdfmx.universal-darwin
>>> Updating dvipdfmx.x86_64-darwin
>> 
> 
> 
> /usr/local/texlive/2010/bin
> 
> contains
> 
> universal-darwin
> x86_64-darwin/pdftex
> 
> each of them contains say pdftex but those are different
> 
> -rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  2850996 Jun 16 19:11 universal-darwin/pdftex
> 
> on the other hand on 64-bit machine
> 
> %ls -l /usr/texbin/pdftex returns
> 
> --rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  1572864 Jun 16 19:19 /usr/texbin/pdftex
> 
> and on 32-bit it returns
> 
> -rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  2850996 Jun 16 19:11 /usr/texbin/pdftex
> 
> 
> %which pdftex
> 
> returns /usr/texbin/pdftex
> 
> Actually /usr/texbin is a symlink to
> 
> lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  63 Jun 12 13:34 /usr/texbin ->
> ../Library/TeX/Distributions/.DefaultTeX/Contents/Programs/i386
> 
> which in turn is a symlink to one of those
> 
> /usr/local/texlive/2010/bin/universal-darwin
> /usr/local/texlive/2010/bin/x86_64-darwin
> 
> (depending on architecture)
> 
> There is a control panel in System Preferences where one can
> select/change which path is used and on 32-bin machines only
> /usr/local/texlive/2010/bin/universal-darwin could be chosen
> 
> Sio, in principle one can select a directory containing tex
> executables and remove the other one - assuming that tlmgr (or TeXLive
> utility which is MacOSX frontend for tlmgr) would not complain too
> much.
> 
> But this is only less than 150 MB for universal-darwin and less than
> 100MB for x86_64-darwin.
> 
> Victor
> 

Howdy,

For 2009 MacTeX only included the universal-darwin (contains Universal builds which run both on PPC and Intel) distribution. A 64bit Snow Leopard Optimized build was in a separate installer. That had the unfortunate side effect that tlmgr didn't ``know'' about it and it wouldn't get updated.

For 2010 MacTeX will include both universal-darwin and x86_64-darwin binaries. On Leopard (OS X 10.5) only the universal-darwin version shows up in the TeX Distribution Preference Pane because the 64 bit x86_64-darwin is optimized for Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) and won't run under Leopard, even if the system is Intel. This is to allow for the use of the 64 bit system if Leopard is updated to Snow Leopard and costs ~83MB of space. Under Snow Leopard both binaries show up in the Preference Pane and the 64 bit versions are chosen by default.

Because both systems are supplied even under Leopard updates in the binaries will happen for both systems via tlmgr. However, in the past, binaries on the Mac haven't been updated once the system has been released, i.e., once TeX Live gets released (there once was a separate update installer when a problem involving fonts was fixed a couple of years ago) so additional overhead in the downloads should essentially disappear.

In the end it's 83MB of a total of 2.72GB for TeX Live 2010 pretest so not worth worrying about.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)