[tex-live] Better ways to find packages and documentation

[Karl Berry]

     > texmf/web2c might not be writable.  

    If the directory is not writable I fear that it's impossible to
    install TeXLive at all.

Not at all.  More or less the whole point of the var trees is to make it
possible for the main trees to be on (for example) a read-only
filesystem or a CD.

The subject is network updates, which means the database file must be in
a mutable directory, since it will change at any time.  So, just as we
do with config.ps and lots of other config files, I expect we'll have a
tlpdb in the distributed tree which corresponds to the original
distribution, but then it should also exist in $TEXMFVAR (or somewhere,
but that seems like the obvious place) for the local changes.  And that
copy should override the one in the dist.

karl