[texhax] listings package missing on OS X

[Steve Schwartz]

I don't know the Mac OsX way to do the following, but here is my
personal solution to the problem of downloading and using a package my
distribution doesn't have under linux (and unix):

Put the packages wherever you like, e.g., in a directory called LATEX in
your home space (or wherever) and use the TEXINPUTS environment variable
to tell your tex installation where to look for things. My .cshrc sets
this environment variable as

setenv TEXINPUTS .:/usr/lib/latex2html/texinputs:/home/sjs/SJSLATEX//:
 
where the trailing "//" descends recursively down my personal directory
and the trailing ":" ensures the standard distribution is picked up.
Dropping .sty files, or package folders, into SJSLATEX makes them
instantly available to latex. I guess latex searches down this set of
paths in the order shown, and quirky things can happen if there are
multiple occurences of packages which aren't identical, but your log
file will tell you where latex found each package you call out in your
source.

For shared installations, it's more robust to reconfigure the local
texmf tree rather than rely on all users to set the appropriate
environment variable, but the above works well. It has the advantage
that when you re-install/update your tex installation, all the packages
you've fetched don't get overwritten, because they aren't in the texmf
tree.

If you're desperate, I'd guess that your installation will search in
your current directory, so you can probably also get something to work
by putting the .sty file in the same folder as your .tex file.

On Sat, 2006-04-01 at 16:15 -0500, tom sgouros wrote:
> > I've searched around google and found that the listings package is
> > missing on OS X. I haven't found a nice solution to this. People
> start
> > talking about fink and I have never had any success with fink. Can't
> I
> > just add to the latex distribution included with OS X?
> 

Steve

-- 
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Professor Steven J Schwartz      Phone: +44-(0)20-7594-7660
Space and Atmospheric Physics    Fax:   +44-(0)20-7594-7772
The Blackett Laboratory          E-mail: s.schwartz at imperial.ac.uk
Imperial College London          Office: Huxley 6M70 
London SW7 2BW, U.K.             Web: http://www.sp.ph.ic.ac.uk/~sjs
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