The TeX Live installer
This is the installation program of the TeX Live distribution.
The installation procedure is simple: just go through the
menus until you are happy with the way all options are set up,
and then do <I> (start installation).
To select a menu item (a letter or a number marked with brackets)
just enter the corresponding letter or number and press return
(the letters are case insensitive except when collections
are being selected). Do not enter the
angle brackets <> themselves.
We will now consider each menu item in more detail:
The binary systems menu (<B>)
The systems menu allows you to select and deselect
the binary packages for various different platforms.
The schemes menu (<C>)
You can choose from a number of different installation
schemes for TeX Live. Selecting one of these selects
some collections in the Collections and Languages lists.
which you can subsequently modify.
The collections menu (<C>)
The collections menu allows you to select and deselect standard
collections. Each collection &emdash; TeX macro files, Metafont font
families, and so on &emdash; consists of several packages.
The language collections menu (<L>)
The language collections menu allows you to select and deselect
language support collections. Each collection consists of several
packages, which provide features like hyphenation files and fonts.
The directories menu (<D>)
The TeX Live distribution will be installed in a single directory tree
(TEXDIR). You may choose any directory you like
since there are no absolute paths compiled into the binaries. Instead,
the Kpathsea library selfdir feature ensures that all
paths are relative to the location of the binaries.
The platform independent files are stored in a directory tree in
TEXDIR/texmf. There is also an extra directory for performing
administrative tasks like change of configuration and languages. This
is where all format files are stored. It defaults to TEXDIR/texmf-var.
This system allows you to mount your TEXDIR/texmf tree read-only.
The options menu (<O>)
The options are not applicable to all installations. Set them as
appropriate for yours.
alternate fonts directory
You can choose an alternate directory for automatically generated fonts;
the default is TEXMFSYSVAR/fonts
One disadvantage may be that new fonts are not shared. I.e., if you
set this to /tmp, and users on two different machines need the same
font, it will be built twice, once on each machine.
symlinks in standard directories (UNIX only)
You can make the binaries, man pages, and info files available on your
system in either (or both) of two ways:
- install them in standard places that are searched for these files
- change your search paths to include the new directories
If you select the symlinks option, symbolic links will be installed in
the directories you choose. Note that if you share the TeX Live installation
accross several machines across NFS and if the chosen standard places are
not shared, you need to create the symbolic links on each client, too
(or use method 2 on your clients).
If you do not use the symlinks option, you probably need to set up
your search paths (PATH, MANPATH, INFOPATH).
do not install doc or source trees
These options are not recommended, but you can use them to save space.
Normally all packages are installed with the source and/or documentation,
but these are not needed to actually run the software. If you
are installing a system for other people, it would be unfriendly to
select these options; if you know what you are doing and need a
minimal disk footprint, go ahead
Install for running from DVD (<V>)
This option starts up a minimal setup which allows TeX Live
to be run out directly from the DVD. For running live, our first
command will be <d> and then the subcommand <1>
to set directories. Even in this case, we must choose a directory on
the local disk to place files that the TeX system itself generates, such
as fonts and formats, and also to provide a place for updated
configuration files, if need be.