[tex-k] Path without !! but with a ls-R file

[Karl Berry]

Manuel,

I'm not sure about the behavior you are descrbing.  Dick Koch reported a
bug (I consider it a bug) in the way kpse behaves which seems to be the
reverse of what you are describing.  See comment that I wrote in
texmf.cnf below.

Anyway, I don't think ls-R should be ignored.  It should be used if it
is there.  My original idea was that if a file was found via ls-R,
great.  If not, then the search would fail if it was a !! tree, and the
disk would be searched if it was not an !! tree.

Anyway II, isn't reimplementing all this (il)logic in texdoc bound to be
problematic?  You can't run kpsewhich?  Can we add something to
kpsewhich so you could run it?

k

% Where to look for ls-R files.  There need not be an ls-R in the
% directories in this path, but if there is one, Kpathsea will use it.
% By default, this is only the !! elements of TEXMF, so that mktexlsr
% does not create ls-R files in the non-!! elements -- because if an
% ls-R is present, it will be used, and the disk will not be searched.
% This is arguably a bug in kpathsea.
%
TEXMFDBS = {!!$TEXMFSYSCONFIG,!!$TEXMFSYSVAR,!!$TEXMFMAIN,!!$TEXMFLOCAL,!!$TEXMFDIST}