Re: Rationale of different texmf-trees

> Could someone maybe clear things up for me a little?

There is much that one can write about this.

Well, two things are very clear: texmf-dist shall carry the texmf tree
that I distribute (maybe with added things if you don't get teTeX directly
from me. Although stuff added e.g. by a linux distribution could well
get into a tree on its own).

texmf-local is to hold stuff added by the local administration, e.g.
additional fonts, missing macro packages.

texmf by default contains the system specific files (e.g. pool files)
and variable runtime data (e.g. format files). However, if $VARTEXMF
is set, the variable runtime data goes there.

The benefit of the separation of texmf / texmf-dist is that you can
e.g. easily replace/upgrade texmf-dist.

I think that it would better fit into the current setup, if texconfig
stored local modified config files in the texmf-local tree (aka
$TEXMFLOCAL) instead of $TEXMFMAIN (resp. $VARTEXMF is that is set).

So, to sum it all up, we have (after my texconfig change for local
configuration files):
  texmf		for system-dependent material
  texmf-dist	the main distribution tree
  texmf-local	for local configuration and locally added/modified packages
  texmf-var	(optional) where automatically created files go (formats)
		If unset they just go into the texmf ($TEXMFMAIN) tree.

Thomas