> Apart from the necessity to recompile lualatex.fmt, which I had forgotten, I > was kind of expecting all that was needed was put the new luatex in the user > area, say inside ~/Library/texlive/2016/bin (would be ~/.texlive2016/bin on > Linux I guess), and it would be picked up automatically when running luatex > from the command line.
No, that *cannot* work ... how should luatex find its initial texmf.cnf? It uses a set of compiled in paths, plus those determined from the location of the binary. You *can* put the luatex binary *anywhere*, but need to make sure that somewhere a texmf.cnf is findable for luatex. Once it has its texmf.cnf, everything works with binaries far away. You could do the following: * copy kpsewhich alongside the new luatex binary * add that path to the front * call: kpsewhich -show-path .cnf In my case I copied it to ~/bin, I got: warning: kpathsea: configuration file texmf.cnf not found in these directories: /home/norbert/bin:/home/norbert/bin/share/texmf-local/web2c:/home/norbert/bin/share/texmf-dist/web2c:/home/norbert/bin/share/texmf/web2c:/home/norbert/bin/texmf-local/web2c:/home/norbert/bin/texmf-dist/web2c:/home/norbert/bin/texmf/web2c:/home/norbert:/home/norbert/share/texmf-local/web2c:/home/norbert/share/texmf-dist/web2c:/home/norbert/share/texmf/web2c:/home/norbert/texmf-local/web2c:/home/norbert/texmf-dist/web2c:/home/norbert/texmf/web2c://texmf-local/web2c:/home:/home/share/texmf-local/web2c:/home/share/texmf-dist/web2c:/home/share/texmf/web2c:/home/texmf-local/web2c:/home/texmf-dist/web2c:/home/texmf/web2c. Which tells you the built-in search paths. You could drop an adjusted texmf.cnf into the directory of the new luatex binary, and adjust the path elements so not to use SELFAUTOPARENT etc, to get a working system. It is possible, but not trivial ;-))) Norbert -- PREINING Norbert http://www.preining.info Accelia Inc. + JAIST + TeX Live + Debian Developer GPG: 0x860CDC13 fp: F7D8 A928 26E3 16A1 9FA0 ACF0 6CAC A448 860C DC13
