Stephen Harris wrote:
By the "same issue as his" I meant this part of your post,
Paul: "The not as good news is that the same installation problem I
experienced in pre4 is present in pre5. (Recap: the configuration script
fails to execute during installation; the program launches ok at the end
of installation, without running the configuration script;"
[SH: "failed attempting to execute the configure script"]
Right, that's the message I get.
The reason why I wrote "perhaps confirmed by my Path prefix"
is that you also wrote: "the first subsequent launch runs the
configuration script successfully but silently.)
I tried that, to launch LyX again. But this produced the same
error as the first launch about no textclass.lst being found,
["Lyx wasn't able to find its layout descriptions"]
sorry Lyx has to close. You didn't include that in your report so
maybe that is another difference.
It is. I have a valid textclass.lst, preference files, etc. under the
Application Data directory, and I intentionally do not delete this when
I uninstall/reinstall LyX (nor does Angus's installer remove these). If
you don't have a valid textclass.lst stored there, perhaps that explains
why LyX won't start for you. I'm guessing here, but I suspect that when
I restart LyX after the installer exits, it finds the "personal"
textclass.lst and then detects the lack of a "system" textclass.lst and
runs the configuration script in the <lyx>\Resources\lyx directory to
generate the system version. (?)
I have gotten the error message
about the configuration script failing in both pre4 and pre5. I can
use either dos or Msys to fix it, sh.exe configure, but either way,
it produces a cyclic output in one long line in Prefix path
Msys
Msys, python
Msys, python, texmf,
Msys, python, texmf, perl
msys, python, texmf, perl, ghostscript
and finally: msys, python, texmf, perl, ghostscript, ImageMagick
Zounds! I do in fact have that (minus Perl, which I did not install).
The reason I never saw it is that the configure script wrote that in
both the system and "personal" versions of lyxrc.defaults, but LyX reads
the preferences file under Application Data\lyx, which contains a
correct (acyclic) path prefix to which I once added an additional directory.
so that to fix it, I delete everything backwards of the last sequence.
I was thinking that each time a partial path was written, that a child
sh.exe might have been creating it, but you understand this stuff
better than I do so you are no doubt right; maybe this is a symptom
produced by the configure code.
Repeating a directory in the path prefix should be as harmless as
repeating a directory in the system command path environment variable
is. The OS will search each directory on the path until it finds the
command it's seeking (sh.exe in this case); the first time it finds one,
it runs it and stops scanning the path. The only harm in redundant path
entries (aesthetics aside) is that there's a length limit to the path
variable, and repetitions of entries early in the string might push one
of the later entries off a cliff.
In Lyx1.3.7pre2 I could install to C:\program files\LyX but not
C:\Lyx; this used to work with 1.3.6 stable, using either path.
I did that with either pre4 or pre5 (I forget which). It did not cure
the configuration script glitch, but once I'd restarted LyX and let it
reconfigure, it seemed to work correctly.
So I think the configure file has changed between versions and
if the configure file implements cases of a path with spaces the
fundamental problem might be there. I'll compare the configuration
files for 1.3.6 and 1.3.7. As you may have also read sometimes
the presence of absence of a "/" at the end of a path is critical.
On a hunch, I tried changing both sh.exe and sed.exe to Win95
compatibility mode without any luck.
I don't think changes to the configure script would explain the failure
of the installer to run it, since it runs ok when started manually, but
it's entirely possible (in fact likely) that something changed that
causes the "looping" in the path prefix.
Paul
