Re: [BUG] config.ac

[Daniel J S. <dan...@ie...>]

On 10/16/2017 07:35 PM, Ethan A Merritt via gnuplot-beta wrote:
 > On Sunday, 15 October, 2017 17:40:03 Achim Gratz wrote:
 >
 >  >
 >
 >  > The configury supposedly tries to find TEXDIR via kpsexpand, but that
 >
 >  > code never gets run if $prefix is set.
 >
 > I really don't know if this is correct or not.
 >
 > In my experience there are so many places that the TeX stuff
 >
 > might go, your only hope is to manually specify where it is
 >
 > on the current system. It doesn't help any that according to the
 >
 > man page
 >
 > "the syntax for kpsexpand is incompatible with teTeX´s as of version 0.4"
 >
 > I read the existing ./configure logic to be that anything kpsexpand
 >
 > returns is where things would be by default, but if you are specifying
 >
 > a $prefix then you are overriding the default.
 >
 > Does it ever make sense to mix the two?
 >
 > What do other people think?

Well, this

AC_ARG_WITH(texdir,dnl
   [--with-texdir=DIR       where to install latex style files
                           (default by kpsexpand in subdir PACKAGE)],
   TEXDIR="$withval",
   TEXDIR="no")

means a person can't choose a directory name "no".

The goal is to find a location for gnuplot's few supplemental tex/latex 
files?  I presume we really don't want those to go to kpsexpand's local 
tex; that's the system's copy of tex source.  Most typically we want the 
extra TeX files to go somewhere in the directory tree where gnuplot is 
installed.  Is that correct?

So, the logic of the current configure is (if no TEXDIR is specified) to 
choose the location where gnuplot is installed as the base directory for 
where TeX files will be placed.  If there is no such prefix, then it 
looks to the default kpsexpand location.  I presume that when the TeX 
files are installed at the location of the gnuplot executable that the 
TeX path is somehow added to the TeX system paths?

 From Achim's patch of the first email:

+    TEXDIR=`$KPSEXPAND '$TEXMFLOCAL'`
+    if test "x$TEXDIR" = "x" -o "$TEXDIR" = "\$TEXMFLOCAL"; then

Aren't these two lines doing the same thing, in most cases?  Anyway, the 
patch seems to make kpsexpand's location for system TeX files the higher 
priority location.

Dan