[OS X TeX] What is this? - ... comp.text.tex.distribution.Helper

[Herbert Schulz]

> On Apr 6, 2017, at 2:28 PM, Richard Seguin <riseguin at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
> When I run EtreCheck on my machine, I get this warning in red, under the “Launch Daemons” section:
> 
> [loaded]    comp.text.tex.distribution.Helper.plist (2016-08-21) [Support] - /Library/PreferencePanes/TeXDistPrefPane.prefPane/Contents/Library/LaunchServices/comp.text.tex.distribution.Helper: Executable not found!
> 
> Etre Check explains the launch daemons section this way: "These are low-level modifications to your operating system that always run in the background. It is common for software to use 3rd party launch daemons. However, this software is always running in the background."
> 
> It appears that something is looking for or pointing to an executable that isn’t there (PrefPane, I’m guessing). When I look in /Library/PreferencePanes I find no reference to TeXDistPrefPane, even with invisibles showing. Does anyone have any idea what’s going on here? What would be pointing to an executable that isn’t there? Where is the comp.text.tex.distribution.Helper.plist?
> 
> Richard Séguin

Howdy,

This is left over from the days when the TeX Distribution Preference Pane was used to change the active TeX Distribution. It no longer works under recent OS versions and TeX Live Utility now does its function.

If you no longer have the preference pane on your system (i.e., you did a clean OS install at some point or manually deleted it [like I did]) you can safely remove that plist file. It's in /Library/LaunchDaemons. Reboot before emptying the trash just to be clean. On the other hand it really isn't doing any harm since the app it points to is no longer there.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)