On Thu, Jul 01, 2021 at 10:03:12AM +0900, Norbert Preining wrote: > Hi all, > > On Thu, 01 Jul 2021, Gavin Smith wrote: > > > Have been looking at the `TEXMF=/usr/share/texmf install-tex` problem. > > > The > > > conclusion from installing texinfo has been the difficulty in locating > > > the correct path for texmf. We could write more detailed section about > > > it. > > [...] > > > > texmf can be installed in a variety of places. The manual (installation > > > part) > > > should list some of the possibilities where texmf could reside. > > > > I don't know very much about it, is there documentation for TeX Live > > etc. that we could refer users to? > > That is really hard to determine, because distributions and TeX Live > upstream might use completely different locations - not might, *are* > using ... > > The best option is probably to install into > kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFLOCAL > that is > TEXMF=$(kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFLOCAL) install-tex > Any other directory might get purged, deleted, ignored, whatever by > distribution package managers (apt, dnf, ...). TEXMFLOCAL is normally > rather stable.
That's useful to know. I edited doc/README and added this. Running make install refers the user to doc/README so I expect this is enough documentation of this issue. I actually don't really understand why we couldn't just install the files automatically under TEXMFLOCAL but I am taking the word of previous documentation that trying to install automatically is fraught with difficulties. I suspect that TEXMFLOCAL hasn't always existed or doesn't exist everywhere. I found old emails discussing whether to use TEXMF or TEXMFMAIN along with a program called "texconfig" (this was in the context of tetex which isn't developed anymore).
