[XeTeX] [tex-live] Problem with XeTeX's (and perhaps other binaries -- not investigated) handling of --output-directory

[David Carlisle]

On 15 January 2017 at 09:20, Philip Taylor <P.Taylor at rhul.ac.uk> wrote:

>
>
> But all of this is besides the point :  surely
>
>         o XeTeX --output-directory=../dynamic-content foo (or foo.tex)
>
> should compile foo.tex, not ../dynamic-content/foo.tex
>
> ** Phil.
>


No I think not,  if you do not give a full path to a file tex (usually)
looks in . first
then looks along the path. --output-directory --output-directory is
documented
as using the specified directory before the path

texdoc web2c page 8 says

`-output-directory=dirname'
               Specify the directory dirname to which output files are
written. Also look for
               input files in dirname first, before looking along the
normal search path. See
               Section 3.4 [Output file location], page 9.


but as I said this thread just joins the many previous ones, it seems like
anyone who
uses --output-directory eventually asks about some confusing aspect of its
behaviour.

I don't think it would be better here if tex looked in the current
directory, then the output
directory then the path, as that would mean that if you add
-output-directory a document
would keep inputting stale tables of contents and aux files from the
current directory
not new ones being written elsewhere.

You can always use a full path to the input file to specify a specific file.

David
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