[tex-live] Better ways to find packages and documentation
Reinhard Kotucha
reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Sat Jul 7 21:31:57 CEST 2007
Karl Berry writes:
> > texmf/web2c might not be writable.
>
> If the directory is not writable I fear that it's impossible to
> install TeXLive at all.
>
> Not at all. More or less the whole point of the var trees is to make it
> possible for the main trees to be on (for example) a read-only
> filesystem or a CD.
>
> The subject is network updates, which means the database file must be in
> a mutable directory, since it will change at any time. So, just as we
> do with config.ps and lots of other config files, I expect we'll have a
> tlpdb in the distributed tree which corresponds to the original
> distribution, but then it should also exist in $TEXMFVAR (or somewhere,
> but that seems like the obvious place) for the local changes. And that
> copy should override the one in the dist.
We cannot simply copy things to $TEXMFVAR. In many cases it's
required to remove an older version of a package. There are many
examples. What comes into my mind is vntex, where the name of a
directory had been changed recently.
We have to *replace* packages. It's not sufficient to put a newer
version somewhere else in the file system. I also don't understand
why anybody wants to update a system which resides on a filesystem
he deliberately made read-only.
Regards,
Reinhard
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