On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 6:37 PM, Aditya Mahajan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Is it possible to test texlive without uninstalling texlive2007
> installed by a system package manager? Last time I tried texlive 2008,
> mkiv setup was reading texmf.cnf that came with system installed
> tl2007, and therefore could not find the correct files. I want to test
> tl2008, but at the moment cannot afford to uninstall tl2007.
I have two versions of TL2007 (Red Hat's and one I maintain from
the svn repo) and have been testing TL2008 without removing.
TL is designed to work from a self-contained tree, but there are
a few potential problems to watch for:
0. Some Windows GUI environments may store the information
gleaned from the TeX configuration when they are first
installed, so you need to check which versions are being
used and be prepared to use command-line stuff if your
editor makes bad choices. This can also be an issue
with some *x GUI environments whre the app is started
by the GUI and doesn't see changes to the path made
in your current shell.
1. the default on is to have texlive/YYYY/texmf* trees with
texlive/texmf-local available to all the versions. If you have
put updates to TL2007 in your texmf-local, they may be older
versions than those in TL2008. The same applies to updates
in $HOME/texmf.
2. on *x be careful not to have the installer create symbolic links,
e.g., in /usr/bin. You can then select the version you want
by adjusting the PATH variable.
On *X I recommend the environment modules tools to manage
your PATH. This is available in some linux distros, and comes
with SGI Irix. Another approach that works on WIn32 and *x
is to write a script that sets the path and loads a shell. Then
you can use that for command-line processing, or start emacs
from the command-line to use AUCTeX.
3. formats and configs may end up in $HOME/.texliveYYYY,
which is OK if you are using only one install for a given year,
but can cause problems if you end up with two installs for the
same TL version. The solution is to make sure you use the
<tool>-sys versions to put configs and formats into the system
directories.
--
George N. White III <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia
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