texmf
tree, you
have to install into a texmf tree of your own; fortunately, the
TDS standard allows for this, and modern distributions allow
you to do it. The most modern distributions refer to the tree as
$TEXMFHOME
, but it used to be called $HOMETEXMF
;
so to check that your TeX system does indeed support the mechanism
you should start with
kpsewhich -expand-var "\$TEXMFHOME"If you can confirm that the technique does indeed work, install your new package (or whatever) in the correct place in a tree based on $HOME/texmf, and generate an index of that tree
texhash $HOME/texmf
(the argument specifies which tree you are indexing: it’s necessary since you don’t, by hypothesis, have access to the main tree, and texhash without the argument would try to write the main tree.
There are two wrinkles to this simple formula: first, the installation you’re using may not define a home TEXMF directory, and second, there may be some obstruction to using $HOME/texmf as the default name. In either case, a good solution is to have your own texmf.cnf — an idea that sounds more frightening that it actually is. The installation’s existing file may be located with the command:kpsewhich texmf.cnf
Take a copy of the file and put it into a directory of your own; this could be any directory, but an obvious choice is the web2c directory of the tree you want to create, i.e., $HOME/texmf/web2c or the like. Make an environment variable to point to this directory:
TEXMFCNF=$HOME/texmf/web2c export TEXMFCNF
(for a Bourne shell style system), or
setenv TEXMFCNF $HOME/texmf/web2c
(for a C-shell style system). Now edit the copy of texmf.cnf
There will be a line in the existing file that defines the tree where everything searches; the simplest form of the line is:TEXMF = !!$TEXMFMAIN
but, there are likely to be several alternative settings behind
comment markers (“%
”), and the person who
installed your system may have left them there. Whatever, you need to
modify the line that’s in effect: change the above to three lines:
HOMETEXMF = $HOME/texmf TEXMF = {$HOMETEXMF,!!$TEXMFMAIN} % TEXMF = !!$TEXMFMAIN
the important point being that $HOMETEXMF
must come before
whatever was there before, inside the braces. For example, if the
original was
TEXMF = {!!$LOCALTEXMF,!!$TEXMFMAIN}
it should be converted to:
HOMETEXMF = $HOME/texmf TEXMF = {$HOMETEXMF,!!$LOCALTEXMF,!!$TEXMFMAIN} % TEXMF = {!!$LOCALTEXMF,!!$TEXMFMAIN}
(retaining the original, as a comment, is merely an aide-memoir in
case you need to make another change, later). The !!
signs
tell the file-searching library that it should insist on a
texhash-ed directory tree; if you can count on yourself
remembering to run texhash on your new tree every time you
change it, then it’s worth adding the marks to your tree:
TEXMF = {!!$HOMETEXMF,!!$LOCALTEXMF,!!$TEXMFMAIN}
as this will make (La)TeX find its files marginally faster.
Having made all these changes, (La)TeX should “just use” files in your new tree, in preference to anything in the main tree — you can use it for updates to packages in the main tree, as well as for installing new versions of things.This question on the Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=privinst