[tex-live] Building the "TeX in Practice" format and saving it in a sensible location

[Philip Taylor]

Norbert Preining wrote:
> On Sun, 02 Dec 2018, Philip Taylor wrote:
>> But it wasn't the current directory at all :  it wanted to write to c:/users/philip taylor.fujitsu-pc/.texlive2018/texmf-var/web2c ! 
> This if fmtutil/mktexfmt which rightly writes to TEXMFVAR (or
> TEXMFSYSVAR if you use the -sys (or --sys) switch).

I really need to get rid of TEXMFVAR; the last thing I want TeX doing is writing things under c:/users/philip taylor.fujitsu-pc/.texlive2018 ...
> If you run the xetex -ini (or --ini) manually, you get the format in the
> current working directory.
True, as David has kindly pointed out, and as I have confirmed in practice.
>
> You might want to read the man page (yes, as in "man page") of fmtutil.
>
> There, the switch
> 	-fmtdir (or --fmtdir)
> is mentioned, which describes where the format is saved.
Hmmm, "man" :  no such command under Windows !
Many thanks Norbert.
** Phil.