Re: environment variable configuration and documentation

Vincent Belaïche wrote:
> That's interesting. But it does not work properly.

It is working properly - it's just not doing what you want!

> Conversion of the TeX
> envvars is not as simple as that, there are two things to consider:
> 
> 1) an empty directory in a directory list means "insert here the default
> list (meaning root dir config for MikTeX, AFAIU)
> 
> 2) a duplicate tailing / means "look at this directory recursively".

And that weird interpretation (i.e. TeX's weird interpretation) of a specific environment variable means that the script needs to handle the conversion itself. It's not a bug in MiKTeX (documentation or otherwise) and it's not a bug in MSYS (which is now unmaintained anyway - although I think all this applies equally with MSYS2). It's the unusual corner-case you appear to doing of using a package compiled from source in MSYS bash trying to call out to native Windows from within MSYS. That's not a normal thing to want or try to do - all the hacks for conversion of PATH, TEXINPUTS, arguments, and so on in MSYS are just designed for the sole purpose of allowing configure scripts just about to work - you're not actually meant to work that way. Cygwin suffers the same problems (even worse, because it only converts PATH).

> I compiled display.c, and placed display.exe under /bin
> 
> 
> Then I tried this:
> 
> 
> $ export TEXINPUTS='/bin//::/local/bin'; display /bin/display.exe Supplied
> argument: c:/Nos_Programmes/msys/bin/display.exe.
> TEXINPUTS: c:\Nos_Programmes\msys\bin\;c:\Nos_Programmes\msys\local\bin.

This looks fine, and in accordance with Posix - except that technically :: should cause ;.; to be inserted.

> Please note that my MSYS root dir is c:\Nos_Programmes\msys
> 
> 
> The value of TEXINPUTS as converted by MSYS and passed to display.exe is
> incorrect, it should have been:
> 
> 
> c:\Nos_Programmes\msys\bin\\;;c:\Nos_Programmes\msys\local\bin
> 
>  look at that ------------^^
> 
> That makes me think that a function missing in MSYS is some configuration
> file where the user tells which variable to convert, and how to convert
> them. This file could look like
> 
> 
> PATH=
> 
> TEXINPUTS=keep all empty up to 1, keep all tailing / up to 2

This would be *horrible* - where would it stop with other programs with their own specific interpretations of other variables? The responsibility of the conversion here from an MSYS (i.e. Unix-world) script calling out to a native Windows program needs to be the script itself, understanding what MSYS can try to do for it (which works for 99% of cases) and knowing when it'll have to do the work itself.

> ...
> 
> 
> 
> Anyway, it seems that MikTeX does not implement properly reading from
> TEXINPUTS, as the cur directory cannot be given less precedence than some
> other directory.

This may be true, but that's one point (which is worth putting in a bug report) buried in a raft of incorrect documentation updates and assertions about how MiKTeX/MSYS should be behaving!


David 

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