[tex-live] Texcapacity exceeded

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2012-11-26 at 15:43:08 -0700, Nelson H. F. Beebe wrote:

 > Thanks to Bernhard Kleine <bernhard.kleine at gmx.net> for suggesting
 > suitable additions to /usr/local/share/texlive/2012/texmf.cnf to
 > handle large bibliography files:
 > 
 > 	main_memory = 5000000
 > 	font_mem_size = 8000000
 > 	hash_extra = 600000
 > 	pool_size = 6250000
 > 
 > In years past, it was recommended that such changes be instead put in
 > the texmf-local subdirectory so as not to be wiped out by possible
 > future updates by tlmgr.  Presumably that is still true, but perhaps
 > tlmgr developers on this list can best advise?

Dear Nelson,
what Bernhard did is absolutely correct.  The search order is
determined by kpathsea, not by tlmgr, and hasn't been changed for
years (AFAIK).  TEXMFLOCAL usually contains macro packages and fonts,
but not kpathsea config files.

It's probably a bit inconvenient if the settings don't survive a TeX
Live upgrade.  On the other hand, the upper limits of memory spaces
depend on the binaries provided by a particular TeX Live release and
were increased over the years.  Hence, the values above probably don't
work with older releases of TeX Live and it's best to have a separate
config file for each release.  At least if you're running many TeX
Live releases in parallel...

Anyway, I think that it's reasonable to copy and adapt the top-level
texmf.cnf file when a new TeX Live is released; it happens once a
year at most.

Kpathsea supports the environment variable TEXMFCNF which allows you
to specify a path to your own texmf.cnf file.  IMO this variable
should only be used by experts who exactly know what they're doing and
who remember in five years what they did five years ago.  I usually
recommend _not_ to set this variable whenever possible.

Regards,
  Reinhard 

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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
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