[tex-live] TEXINPUTS on windows

[Lars Madsen]

Khaled Hosny wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 05, 2010 at 04:29:03PM +0100, Lars Madsen wrote:
>> Khaled Hosny wrote:
>>> On Fri, Nov 05, 2010 at 04:10:55PM +0100, Lars Madsen wrote:
>>>> Akira Kakuto wrote:
>>>>> Dear Lars,
>>>>>
>>>>>> Given a TL10 on windows and a user who has a dir with his
>>>>>> own private packages, say C:\mytexstuff
>>>>>>
>>>>>> How do we add this to TEXINPUTS in TL10?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> MikTeX has a very easy interface for this, but I have no
>>>>>> idea as to how one should add this on TL10. I assume it is
>>>>>> texmf.cnf in texlive/2010/,
>>>>> You can add c:/mytexstuff// to TEXINPUTS.programname
>>>>> in the texmf.cnf, like
>>>>> TEXINPUTS.latex = .;$TEXMF/tex/{latex,generic,}//;c:/mytexstuff//
>>>>>
>>>>> The easiest way may be to define an environment variable
>>>>> TEXINPUTS=c:/mytexstuff//;
>>>>> Don't forget the semicolon.
>>>>>
>>>>> Akira
>>>>>
>>>> why can't we just add
>>>>
>>>> TEXINPUTS=c:/mytexstuff//;
>>>>
>>>> to texmf.cnf?
>>>>
>>>> If this is so complicated, I'd recommend adding a better interface for
>>>> this to the tlmgr TODO list. This is one of the features I like in MikTeX.
>>> I think the current recommended best practice is not to touch TEXINPUTS
>>> at all, there is already local texmf tree(s) where users can put their
>>> stuff.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Khaled
>>>
>> most users will not even know where to look for those, doesn't one
>> need to refresh the filename database afterwards.
> 
> You can just drop stuff in ~/texmf and kpathsea will find it.
> 
>> Again much more complicated than the MikTeX approach.
> 
> I don't know what MikTeX approach is, but I just read recently that
> TEXINPUTS can break all sorts of things and should be left alone.
> 
> Regards,
>  Khaled
> 

MikTeX has a simple an intuitive interface to add more 'TeX roots' to 
MikTeX, i.e. more places to look for files. I have no idea what it does 
at conf level, just that it is very easy to explain to users and for 
them to add extra stuff.

-- 

/daleif