[tex-live] Missing "ppc" symbolic link in .FactoryDefaults/gwTeX-2003-2005 ?

cfrees at imapmail.org cfrees at imapmail.org
Sun Dec 19 23:21:23 CET 2010


On Sat 18th Dec, 2010 at 09:08, Richard Koch seems to have written:

> Jean-Francois,
>
> Thanks for the detailed bug report!
>
> When MacTeX installs TeX Live, it creates TeX Distribution structures for itself, and for three
> other distributions: Fink, MacPorts, and Gerben's original teTeX (but not gwTeX). That's because
> these three distributions don't create their own TeX Distribution structures. But MacTeX does not
> edit TeX Distribution structures created by other distributors.
>
> Thus the gwTeX structure contains a powerpc link but no ppc link because that's what Gerben
> originally provided. This wasn't a mistake on his part; the ppc link came later.
>
> The puzzling feature of your bug report is that your /usr/texbin points to
>
> 	../Library/TeX/Distributions/.DefaultTeX/Contents/Programs/ppc
>
> I have now checked the install scripts for MacTeX 2010, 2009, and 2008 and BasicTeX and all
> create a link to
>
> 	../Library/TeX/Distributions/.DefaultTeX/Contents/Programs/powerpc
>
> I also checked my own powerpc machine, which has this second link. The actual code which
> does this is in a postflight script. The script first removes any existing symbolic link named
> /usr/texbin, and then does the following:
>
> 	PROCESSOR=`/usr/bin/uname -p`
>
> 	if [[ "$PROCESSOR" == "powerpc" ]]; then
> 	echo "### setting program link powerpc"
> 	ln -fhs ../Library/TeX/Distributions/.DefaultTeX/Contents/Programs/powerpc /usr/texbin
>
> Thus the real puzzle is why your /usr/texbin link is incorrect.

ls -l /usr/texbin
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel  62B Sep 26 14:20 /usr/texbin@ \
-> ../Library/TeX/Distributions/.DefaultTeX/Contents/Programs/ppc

I have TL 2008, 2009, 2010 installed on a PPC. I needed to revert to TL
2008 and found it didn't work for this reason - because TL 2008 by
default only has a powerpc link. To solve the problem, I just added a
ppc link to the TL 2008 directory. But whatever went wrong in the
reported case evidently went wrong in my case also.

Not a big deal - the fix is easy and everything works fine - but just
to say it isn't (merely) a one-off.

Let me know if I can provide any further information. I created a
temporary texbin pointing to .../ppc and ran an adapted version of the
ln -fhs command and it correctly changed it to powerpc. So either
something odd is going on in this particular case of the postflight
script is not running that command for some reason. Which is to say
nothing at all, I realise.

- cfr


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