[OS X TeX] Can I delete these old ghostscript folders?

[Richard Seguin]

> On Apr 4, 2023, at 7:33 AM, Herbert Schulz via MacOSX-TeX <macosx-tex at email.esm.psu.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Apr 3, 2023, at 11:58 PM, Richard Seguin <riseguin at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> 
>> I have a new mini M2 Pro arriving soon, and I’m currently doing some housecleaning on my old one before I migrate.
>> 
>> In usr/local/share/ghostscript I have 12 folders with names like 8.63, 9.07, and 9.53.3, and all of them seem to have similar contents. Folder 8.63 dates back to 2014. Can I safely delete all but the very latest — in this case, 9.53.3 — without damaging anything? I’m guessing that these are different versions, none of which has ever been deleted when a new version has been added.
>> 
>> Since I still have TexLive 2021 on my old machine, I intend to migrate everything, including texmf-local but excluding texlive/2021, and then download and install 2023 after the migration.
>> 
>> My old mini can’t be updated beyond Monterey, so this is the first time I’ll be doing a migration between two machines with different OS versions, so I’m a little nervous. I’m also nervous about whether or not I’ll once again have trouble with the scripts I use for typesetting.
>> 
>> Richard Séguin
> 
> Howdy,
> 
> Sounds fine to me. I'm always nervous when migrating!
> 
> What kind of scripts are you using for typesetting? If you do things with Python you'll have to install a python interpreter. Also, the system will notify you and install Rosetta (technically it's Rosetta2) if you execute any software that's Intel only.
> 
> Enjoy your new system!!!
> 
> Good Luck,
> 
> Herb Schulz
> herbs2 at mac.com


Herb, thanks! I wasn’t thinking about Python. In order to tie BBEdit and Skim together for typesetting, etc., I’ve been using a mixture of AppleScript and Pyton scripts from this source:

https://nathangrigg.com/latex-bbpackage/ <https://nathangrigg.com/latex-bbpackage/>

It was late last July that I upgraded from Big Sur to Monterey 12.5 and got the nasty surprise that Apple had removed Python 2 for security reasons. The above scripts assumed Python 2, and the scripts are no longer maintained by the author. So, I downloaded Python 3 from Python.org, and (with Michael Sharpe’s help) modified the scripts to get them to work with Python 3. (I think I also had to download command line tools as well to get something to work.) Anyway, looking at Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/bin, there is a reference to python3-intel64 but nothing indicating a universal binary, so I think when I downloaded this I got an intel64 only version. It appears that I should download the latest 3.11.2 universal2 installer from https://www.python.org/downloads/macos/ so I can avoid having to use rosetta. I’m not sure if installing a new version gives you the option to remove the old one, and if the old one is left how to switch to the new one. Problems problems problems …

Fortunately I think all my important apps are now universal binaries, but there are those hidden things like these python scripts that you may not think about. My other big worry is whether or not the print driver for my old USB-2 connected HP Laserjet will continue working under rosetta (some people have had problems with USB connected printers), and if not, whether or not there is a silicon version out there somewhere ...

Richard Séguin

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