[tex-live] reliability of ~/texmf in TeXLive and other distros?

[Norbert Preining]

On Fr, 11 Dez 2009, Dan Drake wrote:
> We'll soon be distributing SageTeX with Sage by default, and we'd like
> to have a reasonable way to install the package so that LaTeX can find
> it. I'd like to simply do something like this in a script:
> 
>     cp sagetex.sty ~/texmf/tex/latex/sagetex/

I would suggest:
	cp sagetex.sty `kpsewhich -expand-var '$TEXMFHOME'`/tex/latex/sagetex
that should work on all different platforms and under different 
assumptions.

You might make a distinction, if ROOT (uid==0) installs to use
	TEXMFLOCAL
here ...

>     texhash ~/texmf/

That is probably *counterproductive* since
	TEXMFHOME
is searched without the ls-R database, so you only might create
problems here.

FOr TEXMFLOCAL it is the same AFAIR.

(That is at least since TeX Live 2005 the way (AFAIR))

For completeness:

> but I don't know to what extent I can rely on TeXLive looking in ~/texmf
> by default. I installed TL 2009 and it does this, but does anyone here

I think *ALL* tex installation since tetex2 were using 
	TEXMFHOME = $HOME/texmf
TeX Live 2009 (or was it 2008? or 2007?) added that we do not use
		$HOME/texmf
but
		~/texmf
in the texmf.cnf file because that is expanded to 
	(on Unix) -> $HOME
	(on Windows) -> %USERPROFILE%
But, as I see from the answer of MacTeX, some distributions might
change 
	TEXMFHOME
to something different, from there comes my proposal from above.

Best wishes

Norbert
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Norbert Preining            preining@{jaist.ac.jp, logic.at, debian.org}
JAIST, Japan            TU Wien, Austria           Debian TeX Task Force
DSA: 0x09C5B094   fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76  A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094
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