Comment 6 for bug 186164

Hi,

On Mo, 17 Mär 2008, Hans Georg wrote:
> Anyway, this is what I have
> TEXMFCNF=.:/home/georg/share/texmf/web2c:
> /home/georg/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf

Ok.

> Why is ls-R useless under ~?
>
> 1. Removing ls-R makes no difference.
> 2. Remaking ls-R makes no difference.
> 3. Changing texmf.cnf to ignore ls-R does make a difference.

They are not useless, but dangerous, because people tend to forget to
update the ls-R database when dropping files into ~/texmf. That's the
reason why ls-R search is disabled in TEXMFHOME.

> I am not sure how much speed one would gain by using ls-R,

in $HOME probably nothing.

> The undocumented behaviour is annoying, but I can live with it.

I still don't see actually what the undocumented behaviour is. THe one
is funding texmf.cnf in TEXMFHOME/web2c/texmf.cnf, the other is about
searching/using ls-R. So what is the problem?

> The previous setup had worked for years with tetex under previous
> Ubuntu releases, other linux distroes and solaris.

Well, they probably had a different texmf.cnf.

> I am convinced that the texmf.cnf was read all the time, but
> that the texmf tree was not searched and the ls-R was not found.
> It would be very odd if ls-R is used to locate texmf.cnf, as
> texmf.cnf defines whether ls-R should be used or not.

the FIRST texmf.cnf is NEVER searched via ls-R or something similar, but
via compiled in pathes (using SELFAUTOPARENT and some fixed pathes).
Then TEXMFCNF is used to find other texmf.cnf files. That is what should
work. ls-R or not is a different behaviour.

If the texmf.cnf thingy does not work please complain with a detailed
bug report to
 <email address hidden>

Thanks.

Best wishes

Norbert

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Dr. Norbert Preining <email address hidden> Vienna University of Technology
Debian Developer <email address hidden> Debian TeX Group
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