[tex-live] TeX Live installation tools

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 3 November 2010 Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote:


 > Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
 > >
 > > On the local machine.[snip]
 > 
 > OK, but the original scenario installed everything on
 > the server, so there would be no local equivalent of
 > TEXMF<whatever>, nor would the user have had any
 > say in where TEXMF<whatever> went, so might this
 > lead to said innocent user getting PKs installed
 > on his C: drive even though he/she otherwise
 > reserves C: solely for Windows and other official
 > Microsoft stuff, and would prefer to have his/her
 > PKs on D: or wherever ?

Files owned by users are installed under TEXMFHOME, TEXMFVAR, and
TEXMFCONFIG.  Where this is can be configured at install time.  By
default these directories are in %USERPROFILE% on Windows.

If you install TL one a local machine, you can instruct the installer
to create them on drive D:.  But if you install TL on a server, you
have to consider that drive D: is not necessarily a partition of a
hard disc on all client machines.  The default location must be a
directory which always exists and is writable by the user.  This is
usually $HOME on Unix and %USERPROFILE% on Windows.

Users still can set environment variables on local machines, though
IMO this is not advisable unless they exactly know what they are
doing.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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