[OS X TeX] How do I tell MacTeX about my user-install of Live TeX?

[Herbert Schulz]

> On Mar 6, 2015, at 11:10 AM, Maloney, Christopher (NIH/NLM/NCBI) [C] <maloneyc at ncbi.nlm.nih.gov> wrote:
> 
> I posted this question on the TeX SX site here, http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/229954/how-do-i-tell-mactex-about-my-user-install-of-live-tex, and they suggested that I send the question to this mailing list.
> 
> This question is similar to "How do I set up MacTeX so admin rights aren't necessary?" (http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/3744/how-do-i-set-up-mactex-so-admin-rights-arent-necessary).
> 
> I have a Mac at work, and the sysadmins won't give me write permissions to /usr/local/texlive. So, per the instructions in "Is there any way to have a LaTeX compiler on a Mac without root access?” (http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/106113/is-there-any-way-to-have-a-latex-compiler-on-a-mac-without-root-access), I installed my own user-specific version of TeX Live, at ~/Library/texlive/2014, and it is working fine.
> 
> Now, how do I tell MacTeX's "TeX Distribution" utility (in System Preferences) about this installation of TeX Live, so that I can use MacTeX with it? If I need admin rights to do this, it would be okay -- I can ask our sysadmins to do this if it's a one-time thing. What I don't want is to be tied to asking them, for example, every time I want to install a new package.
> 
> The comments to my question on SX indicate that there is a way to do this by tweaking the symlinks under /Library/TeX. I’ve had a look there, and these symlinks see pretty complicated! Is there an easy way (maybe a script) that will set up these symlinks automatically, if I just tell the sysadmins to run it for me, giving them the location of my local install?
> 
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Chris Maloney
> 

Howdy,

The TeX Distribution Preference Pane won't do that for you (and, it's broken under Yosemite anyway, if that's what you're using). However, there is an alternate individual user preference pane that will automatically build the proper reference for your ``non-MacTeX installed'' distribution. It uses a different link, not /usr/texbin, so you may have to change some preferences in any GUI apps you use (it will do some apps on its own). Read the `An Alternate Preference Pane' section on the Mactex page about Yosemite, <http://www.tug.org/mactex/yosemite.html>, for more information.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)