[tex-live] texdoc can't find texmf.cnf

[Frank Küster]

Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard <mpg at elzevir.fr> wrote:

> Hmmm... really?  Unless I missed something, kpse takes its values from all
> texmf.cnf files (which can be user-specific in TEXMFCONFIG), and also from
> environment variables, so on the contrary this is user-specific if the user
> wants to.

Does it?

$ cat .texmf-config/web2c/texmf.cnf
MYTEXMFVAR = bar
$ ls .texmf-config/ls-R
ls: cannot access .texmf-config/ls-R: No such file or directory
$ kpsewhich --var-value=TEXMF
{/home/frank/.texmf-config,/home/frank/.texmf-var,/home/frank/texmf,/etc/texmf,!!/var/lib/texmf,!!/usr/local/share/texmf,!!/usr/share/texmf,!!/usr/share/texmf-texlive}
$ kpsewhich --var-value=MYTEXMFVAR

$ kpsewhere texmf.cnf
/usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf
/usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf
/usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf
/usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf
/usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf
/usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf
/usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf
/usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf

Or is it just our Debian compilation which messes this up?  I always
thought that only one texmf.cnf is read, since it must be read in order
to define the paths to look at, and its search path is hardcoded in the
binary? 

Hm, I see that we do some Debian specific things here, there's a comment
in our texmf.cnf:

% This definition isn't used from this .cnf file itself (that would be
% paradoxical), but the compile-time default in paths.h is built from it.
% The SELFAUTO* variables are set automatically from the location of
% argv[0], in kpse_set_progname.  
% 
% The TETEXDIR stuff isn't likely to be relevant unless you're using 
% teTeX, but it doesn't hurt.
%
% For security reasons, it is better not to have . part of the path.
% 
% Since tetex-bin_3.0-22, it restricts this to dirs that actually exist,
% to silent e.g. automounters:
TEXMFCNF = /usr/share/texmf/web2c;/usr/local/share/texmf/web2c

I don't see how $TEXMFHOME could be added here, though.

>> It would of course be good to have something like this, and take out all
>> this from texmf.cnf.
>
> Is it that good to take things out of texmf.cnf?  A very handy thing with
> kpathsea is that it takes care for us of precedence when variables are set in
> multiple config file or environment variables.
>
> But of course some things must be moved out of texmf.cnf, like rm_command,
> since as Reinhard obeserved those are system-specific.

I don't know whether it is a good idea to have parts of texdoc's
configuration in texmf.cnf (except the definition of the doc paths,
which are also used by other applications), and parts elsewhere.  

Regards, Frank

-- 
Frank Küster
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)