[OS X TeX] dvisvgm and ghostscript

[koch at uoregon.edu]

> Most of those dylib files are actually symlinks. Is is it possible there’s a problem there? Maybe something went wrong during installation? This is what I have, but I installed ghostscript differently:
> 
> albemuth:~/tmp> ls -l /opt/brw/Cellar/ghostscript/9.53.3/lib 
> total 26584
> -r--r--r--  1 ealdrov  wheel  13610904 Oct  2 07:59 libgs.9.53.dylib
> lrwxr-xr-x  1 ealdrov  wheel        16 Oct  2 07:59 libgs.9.dylib@ -> libgs.9.53.dylib
> lrwxr-xr-x  1 ealdrov  wheel        16 Oct  2 07:59 libgs.dylib@ -> libgs.9.53.dylib
> 
> 
> —Ettore

Folks,

When Ghostscript is compiled from source, the usual 

	./configure
	make
	sudo make install

sequence does not create or install the ghostscript library. The library is created with a special command

	make so

and three files are then placed in the folder sobin inside the source directory. Two are symbolic links,

	libgs.dylib
	libgs.dylib.9

and one is an actual library,

	libgs.dylib.9.53

Then there arises the issue of where these three files should be placed. For TeX Live this issue is not very important since only one binary, dvisvgm, uses the library.

MacTeX very deliberately installs nothing in /usr/local/lib because I don'r want to interfere with libraries the user might install there from other places. The Ghostscript install 

	sudo make install

places the gs binary and many other scripts in /usr/local/bin, but installs everything else in

	/usr/local/share/ghostscript/9.53.3

and this folder even contains a subfolder named lib. So that seemed to be a natural place to put the actual dynamic library.

As for symbolic links, I decided to break my own rule and add three links to /usr/local/lib named

	libgs.dylib
	libgs.9.dylib
	libgs.9.53.dylib

I am not wedded to this final piece of the puzzle. Indeed I'd much rather install nothing in /usr/local/lib. And the few people who actually use dvisvgm seem to use the flag and point to the actual location of the library.

All of this does nothing to explain the problem Doris is having. ( Incidentally, I wonder what would happen if she installed our 9.50 package instead, since it also installs a library. After that test, 9.53.3 can be installed again and it will become active.)

 I'm just trying to warn us not to get involved with side issues. I hope it helps to know exactly what our package does.

Dick Koch
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