Bob, Bob Lounsbury wrote:
So selecting to install 'for all users' doesn't create the userconfig file structure in a user account, but 'for me only' does? Even in my 'all users' commonconfig folder there is no 'latex' folder, only a 'tex' folder. Easy enough to create though.
Two disclaimers here: first, I'm going from personal experience, not from any study of the MiKTeX documentation; and second, I'm still on 2.6, so if anything relevant changed in 2.7 I'm unaware of it.
It's not that installing for 'all users' will not create the localtexmf stuff in the individual user account. I have one machine where I installed for 'all users', and I have localtexmf trees under both 'all users' and my personal login. Apparently, going by William's post, MiKTeX will assign the respective paths to UserConfig and CommonData (and I guess create the base for both trees) but won't add directories underneath until they are needed. On the one laptop where I installed for all users, I also have a (presumably redundant) C:\TeX\localtexmf directory that I created, listed as yet another root. I vaguely recall that this is left over from an earlier MiKTeX upgrade, where (in a version that did not use the ...\Application Data\... paths) I had a few packages installed in the local tree and did not want to have to reinstall them when I moved up to a newer MiKTeX version.
As to William's case, he could install his package under either UserConfig or CommonData (or follow your suggestion and create his own localtexmf tree) and any of those would be fine. The sole virtue I can see for putting it under CommonData would be if he used MiKTeX under a different log in, or had someone else using the same machine with a different log in and wanted that person to have access to the package. I'm the sole user of all my machines, other than some network admins who have neither use for nor business playing with MiKTeX, so I usually install for my own use only. If William follows your advice, he just needs to add his new localtexmf tree as another root.
I also installed 'for all users' and so the userconfig structure was not created for my account. Although I prefer to create my own texmf hierarchy, as I'm sure you've read in this or other posts :-}. So, I know nothing will happen to my files.
At some point, you might end up with UserConfig set up, and I have no idea what the trigger might be. I know that I've got both UserConfig and CommonData on my laptop, and I did nothing special (that I can recall) to get UserConfig. The only thing installed under it is one non-MiKTeX package I had to add last year; I created the ...\latex\<name> folder, but I'm sure MiKTeX had already supplied me with ...\tex.
It's funny that you say that the userconfig or commonconfig directory is 'safe' because if you mouse over these Root directories in the MiKTeX settings is says something like, "... this directory is maintained by MiKTeX and should not be used to store your own files as they could be lost in an upgrade ..." .
I assume you're referring to the Roots tab in the settings application. Is this in 2.7? In 2.6, the tool tip just says something like "This is the per-user configuration directory. User-specific configuration file will be installed here." If a warning has been added, perhaps that means MiKTeX's behavior has changed.
Have you ever experimented with installing files to userconfig and uninstalling MiKTeX to see if the files are removed or not? To verify that these files are 'safe' in the directory. Just wondering as I never have and the MiKTeX warning scared me away from storing my files there :-}.
No. What I have done is upgrade MiKTeX (which creates a UserConfig tree parallel to the old one, copy over packages I wanted to keep (if any) and then deleted the older version. What I can't recall is whether I ran the uninstaller or just manually deleted the program files. On my laptop (MiKTeX 2.6), I have a UserConfig tree from MiKTeX 2.5 still lying around. (Well, had -- I just deleted it.) My memory being what it isn't, I'm not sure if the MiKTeX uninstaller gives you the option to hang onto your UserConfig stuff, but I'm pretty sure it's safe from upgrades, since the upgrades go into new directories. The other open question is whether UserConfig survives a reinstallation of the same version, or whether it gets reset. My guess would be that it survives (i.e., that the installer will not delete existing files), but that is just a guess.
Cheers, Paul
