[tex-live] KPSE_DOT in fmtutil: Why set to `pwd`?

Thomas Esser te at dbs.uni-hannover.de
Mon Mar 27 08:46:26 CEST 2006


>   : ${KPSE_DOT=$thisdir}
>   export KPSE_DOT

The reason for me to implement KPSE_DOT in all kind of scripts (mktexpk,
fmtutil etc.) was to try to immitate a regular call of mf / tex as close
as possible. I.e. people might have a local hyphenation pattern file
which they could use via
  tex -ini ...
I wanted that the tools work in the same way. Since the tools chdir away,
I somehow had to adjust the search paths.

Instead of setting individual search paths, I thought that KPSE_DOT
would be a better "interface" for that functionality.

> texmf.cnf, in the current directory are read.  Or tried to read, the
> user who reported this as http://bugs.debian.org/358330 has an
> nfs-mounted homedir in which root has no right to read files, and always
> gets error messages:
> 
> /users/huron/danjean/texmf.cnf: Permission denied

Does this mean, that debian has "." in the search path for texmf.cnf
files? If yes, where (beginning, end, middle)?

> This is just annoying, but might become a problem if random
> configuration files are lying around (e.g. backups).  

The same would happen for a regular tex / latex / mf run?

Thomas


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