Re: Rationale of different texmf-trees

Erik Frisk <[email protected]> schrieb:

> Hi all,
>
> I have not really understood the rationale with the different
> texmf-trees and what belongs where.
>
> Browsing through the tetex-pretest mail archive I found:
> http://www.mail-archive.com/tetex-pretest%40dbs.uni-hannover.de/msg00039.html
> where Sebastian Rahtz said:
>
>  > texmf is for system-dependent material (pool files, config files)
>  > texmf-dist is for the public system-indepedent packages
>  > texmf-local is for local configuration and private changes
>  > texmf-var is a cache of files which are created automatically
>
> This makes sense, but then I wonder why texconfig stores its local
> configurations in texmf-var and not in texm-local. It does not make
> sense (to me) to set texmf-var=texmf-local. Also, at the moment I have
> local configurations for e.g. xdvi in texmf-local, this is corrrect
> right? It shouldn't be in the texmf-var tree?
>
> Could someone maybe clear things up for me a little?

I'll try to. This partitioning has to be looked from different points of
view. One is that of somebody preparing a distribution for a lot of
people on a lot of machines. For example I am working on a teTeX package
for Debian GNU/Linux. 

- We need a place where to store the files we will install from the
  package: texmf-dist (and texmf, see below). It should be possible that
  this is on a disk partition that is usually mounted read-only.

- We need a place where our package can store dynamically generated data,
  e.g. font outlines: texmf-var, which will always be on a read-write
  disk partition

- We need a place where our users, or the administrators of machines that
  install our packages, can store local additions: texmf-local.

What we don't really need, in fact, is texmf, because almost everything
from there will go to other places anyway, and get only symbolic links
at the original place: generated files (formats etc) go to the /var
partition, configuration files into /etc/texmf.

But for users who install teTeX on their own, without using some
pretaylored package, the distinction between texmf and texmf-dist is
good: They can keep their configuration, formats with customized
hyphenation etc. in texmf, and when a new tarball comes out, they just
replace texmf-dist.

(Furthermore, you can alwas add more trees in texmf.cnf. This is useful
e.g. if you happen to work on a machine where you aren't root. There
might be local addition in texmf-local, but instead of bothering your
admin to update them you can as well use ~/texmf.)

Does that help (and did I understand everything correctly)?

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster, Biozentrum der Univ. Basel
Abt. Biophysikalische Chemie