Re: no /etc/texmf directory created

On Sat, 20 Nov 2004, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:

> Now I know what you mean.  Even if you can resolve all conflicts, in
> my opinion it is not desirable to have two teTeX versions installed on
> a system.  This always leads to confusion though it is theoretically
> possible.

It is both possible (on *n*x, at least) and necessary.

Many software packages contain documentation in tex form.  Often the
configuration tools check for /usr/bin/tex or for a certain rpm
package, so if the user has only TeX Live installed from some NFS
share, they can't build the docs.  While it is possible to tweak things
to use TL, too often you end up chasing down missing macro packages, etc.
It is much easier to stick with the exact tools used by the package
author, even if they are not suitable for your current projects.

The "environment modules" package makes it easy to switch between TeX 
packages (assuming they are configured to run from different top-level 
trees -- if you need /usr/bin/tex to change then things get messy). It 
_is_ rather too easy to jump into something without checking which version 
is currently active, and sometimes you have done "configure ; make ; make 
docs" before you realize the problem.

-- 
George N. White III  <[email protected]>