[tex-k] problems with dvips search paths....

[Karl Berry]

Hi Andrew,

    Your response does pose the question of why was dot (.) 
    removed from the search path.  

Sorry, I don't have the energy to trawl through the old archives.
You can as well as me, if you care enough.  Might be either tex-live or
tex-k, I don't know.

    Can config.foo files be that insecure??  

They allow execution of arbitrary external programs.

    On my TexLive2008 installation I find that there is a config.ps file 
    in two places: 
        ./texmf/dvips/config/config.ps 
        ./texmf-config/dvips/config/config.ps 
    which one takes precedence and why ?? 

Whichever one  kpsewhich config.ps  returns.  Which should be the one in
texmf-config.  It's modified according to the user's choice of default
paper size.

See the comments in texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf or the TeX Live manual for a
summary description of the different trees.

      why is it that when I type: 
        kpsewhich   config.foo    
       or 
        kpsewhich  -must-exist config.foo 
      it is not able to find it ?? 

Akira answered this.  Although we can special-case the name "config.ps"
to look in the "dvips config" path, config.foo can be anything (poor
naming convention, but it's too late now), and is used for lots of
things besides dvips config files.  So you have to say
kpsewhich --format="dvips config" config.foo

Best,
Karl