Running tlmgr...

> On Feb 11, 2026, at 5:36 PM, Karl Berry <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Bruno, I'm somewhat baffled. If you run any command as sudo, anything
> that's created will have root ownership. Using -H or not is immaterial.
> I don't believe our scripts ever try to chown anything, and I don't
> think they should.
> 
> You-all have said that it's standard practice to use sudo to install
> things on the Mac. So I do not know how you ever end up with a TL tree
> that is not entirely owned by root -- does the MacTeX installer chown
> everything after? Or maybe it is owned by root, and that's ok? But your
> msg implies otherwise.
> 
> --
> 
> Norbert did insert code into fmtutil and updmap to try to avoid the need
> for -H, but this is a different question from the ownership of what is
> created. Here are his comments (it's the same for fmtutil):
> 
>  # $HOME and sudo and updmap-sys horror
>  #   some instances of sudo do not reset $HOME to the home of root
>  #   as an effect of "sudo updmap" creates root owned files in the home 
>  #   of a normal user, and "sudo updmap-sys" uses map files and updmap.cfg
>  #   files from the directory of a normal user, but creating files
>  #   in TEXMFSYSCONFIG. This is *all* wrong.
>  #   we check: if we are running as UID 0 (root) on Unix and the
>  #   ENV{HOME} is NOT the same as the one of root, then give a warning
>  #   and reset it to the real home dir of root.
>  sub reset_root_home { ... }
> 
> As far as I can tell, no other scripts (not tlmgr, not install-tl, not
> tlshell, not anything) have this kludge. Maybe I'm wrong.
> 
> 
> So, overall, I'm not sure what to do about this. --thanks, karl.

Howdy,

I'm sure Bruno will give more (and probably better) information. The -H only changes the the login directory and therefore the PATH. On the Mac sudo alone still uses the users' PATH by default while using -H changes to root's PATH (or whatever it is supposed to default to). But TeX Live by itself installs in /uar/local/texlive/2026 (for TL-2026) and other files used by TeX Live on the Mac in /set/paths.d and /Library/TeX (MacTeX doesn't put anything in ~).

With standard MacTeX TL is owned by root and requires admin password to change but is accessible by all users for reading and executing.

Hopefully I haven'tsid anything wrong...

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
[email protected]