texlive-bin: building under --with-no-root-privileges fails attepting to create dir /Library/TeX

[mike142wood]

attempt to update (and then remove and build) texlive-bin @2020.54632_1 would not activate because creation of directory /Library/TeX needs root privelege and I am running --with-no-root-privileges. Have I missed setting up an alternate Library path to use ~/Library or /opt/local/Library.

macOS 10.14.6 ; Xcode 11.3.1 (11C504)

[mike142wood]

Appeared to build successfully for version texlive-bin @2019.50896_3+x11 on 7 July 2020

[drkp (Dan Ports)]

The latest version of texlive-bin installs links into /Library/TeX so that MacTeX's TeX Live Utility can switch between active TeX distributions. That won't work for a non-root install

There's not really any point installing that directory structure anywhere else, so we should probably just skip it if non-root. Are there any other configurations where we should also skip it? Maybe it should be a default variant?

[dliessi (Davide Liessi)]

Replying to drkp:

There's not really any point installing that directory structure anywhere else, so we should probably just skip it if non-root.

I agree.

Are there any other configurations where we should also skip it?

I don't see a technical reason to avoid cleaning the old texdists and creating the new one, if we have root privileges. The current code already sensibly deals with non-default prefixes.

Maybe it should be a default variant?

Indeed a user might want to disable the texdist creation. As for the old texdists, given that they do not work anymore and that MacTeX considers them property of MacPorts, I would delete them unconditionally.

[mike142wood]

texlive-bin, -latex, -common, -basic were brought in as remote dependents of something else, perhaps gnuradio. They seem to uninstall without complaint. No other use of LaTeX on this system.

Perhaps user should be offered the option of going to admin to create /Library/TeX directory or omitting the directory and being told what functionality will be missing.