[OS X TeX] TeX Live 2015 and MacTeX-2015

Richard Koch koch at uoregon.edu
Fri Jun 12 12:13:23 EDT 2015


> On Jun 12, 2015, at 1:36 AM, Berend Hasselman <bhh at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 12-06-2015, at 03:55, Richard Koch <koch at uoregon.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> On all older systems of OS X, the 2015 versions of MacTeX and 
>> Basic TeX create two links pointing to the binaries: 
>> 
>> 	/usr/texbin
>> 	/Library/TeX/texbin
>> 
> 
> Why not change the “/usr/texbin" to “/usr/local/texbin” ?
> Or will that also no longer  be permitted?
> 

Here’s more explanation than you want:

I watched the WWW keynote at home on June 8. That evening,
I downloaded the El Capitan beta and discovered that MacTeX-2015
didn’t work. I looked at the install log and saw that the system refused
to define /usr/texbin when the postinstall script requested it.

The TeX Live 2015 DVD was scheduled to go to manufacturing
on June 9.

I wrote to several developers, suggesting /usr/local/texbin, /Library/TeX/texbin,
and some other possibilities. I also wrote Manfred Lotz, who handles the
DVD, warning of this problem but adding “I know there is nothing we can do
about it.” Then I went to bed.

At 3:00 in the morning, I woke up with the thought:  “All hope is lost unless
you make a choice NOW and fix the installers.” A few developers had
replied by then. One picked /usr/local/texbin and one picked /Library/TeX/texbin.
From my point of view, /Library/TeX/texbin was a little safer and had the
advantage that it is visible to the user in the Finder. So I picked it.

By noon on June 10, the new installers were in the DVD and on the web
and after a lot of testing, Manfred agreed to use them.

Dick Koch


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