[tex-live] TeX Live 2008 testing - problems downloading

[Mojca Miklavec]

> Hi
>
> Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 1:02 AM, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
>>>
>>> and thanks, Taco, for the Context
>>> crash course.  If anybody wants to test it, check out rev 9175.
>>
>> There are at least three more things that need to be fixed for ConTeXt:
>> - texmfcnf.lua or or some similar file is missing (forgot the name,
>> but I can check)
>
> This file is not really needed, context will work fine without it.
>
>> - any chance to set TEXFCACHE to something different than $HOME? one
>> now gets $HOME/luatex-cache folder created, which I consider a bit
>> ugly. I know that Norbert had dozens of requests for Hans, but it
>> never got really resolved
>
> Actually, just about the only reason for having texmfcnf.lua is for
> setting up TEXMFCACHE. The TEXMFCACHE default is:
>
>  TEXMFCACHE=$TMP;$TEMP;$TMPDIR;$TEMPDIR;$HOME;$TEXMFVAR;$VARTEXMF;.
>
> so $HOME is already context's fifth attempt to get a temporary
> directory.

Yes, but Mac has no TMP variable set, so it always defaults to $HOME.
(Even $HOME/.luatex or $HOME/.texlive would be better.)

Can we (please) set it to some
"this-is-texlive-dir-where-formats-and-other-temporary-junk-should-go"?
I have no idea which folder that is, but anything would be better than
$HOME/luatex-cache.

> I have no idea whether it is even feasible to set up a more sensible
> value from texlive, without intimate knowledge of the local system.
>
> Anyway, if that is possible: the file texmfcnf.lua is looked for in
> the 'web2c' directories (the search logic is the same as for texmf.cnf).
> It should be a lua script that returns a table containing texmf-style
> variable(s) as keys. As I said, the only one that makes sense atm is
> TEXMFCACHE.
>
> My local one has:
>
>  -- force the cache to the /tmp dir
>  config = {}
>  config.TEXMFCACHE = "/tmp"
>  return config
>
> If $TEXMFVAR is known to be writeable (if present), you could do
>
>  -- force the cache to the /tmp dir
>  config = {}
>  config.TEXMFCACHE = "$TEXMFVAR;$TMPDIR"
>  return config
>
> etc. ?
>
>> - modules for ConTeXt need to be imported
>
> Mojca, are you or Patrick planning to take care of that?

We have a mirror for CTAN-ers, but even a better mirror would be what
we have for minimals. I can redirect that. The fastest thing to do
would be to import the folders, but I will write to CTANers again.

Mojca