Re: ConTeXt on Debian: The wiki entry

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

Sanjoy Mahajan wrote:
> A system-wide installation, if done cleanly, would be much easier (as
> plink pointed out).  If you (or 'texexec --make' to generate the
> formats) ask kpathsea where to put the format files, it'll give you a
> directory in TEXMFHOME, so a per user install.  But how do you ask
> kpathsea the correct question so that it'll tell you where they should
> go for a system-wide install?
>   
you can't and i remember asking for such a feature but ... ; the only way to figure that out is to check all format paths and take the first one that fits; unfortunalty the tetex paths are rather messy so it's hard to predict in what permutation of home, usr, share, sys, opt * local * tex, TeX, teTeX, whatever * texmf, texmflocal, texmf-local, texmf-teTeX, texmf-dis, texmf.local, texmf-whocares * web2c, web2c/engine etc etc a format may end up; this is further complicated by the fact that kpse has to do some guessing about where it's configuration files are (web2c, etc, home, nowhere), what trees make sense, etc etc; and, yes, some of the paths are hard coded in the binaries, so relocating is tricky ... isn't it magic that tex still runs -) 

but luatex will make thinsg better (we hope) 

Hans 

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