Re: [BUG] config.ac

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

On 10/16/2017 08:29 PM, Daniel J Sebald wrote:
> 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?

Oh, wait, I don't think I was understanding that correctly.  kpsexpand's 
'$TEXMFLOCAL' is a location for "non-system" TeX files (that will be 
recognized in TeX/LaTeX's path?).  So, that is typically where we want 
files to go, regardless of whether one indicates a gnuplot installation 
prefix or not.  Is that right?  We really want to use $prefix as a last 
resort then, correct?  In that case, I would go with what Achim is arguing.

+    TEXDIR=`$KPSEXPAND '$TEXMFLOCAL'`

[Do we know that kpsexpand is present once reaching this point?]

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

[If kpsexpand  fails to find a TEXMFLOCAL, how do we know that 
TEXMFLOCAL is going to be present in our environment?  Just hoping by 
chance that it is?  If we didn't have kpsexpand, I could see attempting 
this last-ditch effort.]

+      if test "x$prefix" != "xNONE"; then
+        TEXDIR=${prefix}/share/texmf
+      else
          TEXDIR=${ac_default_prefix}/share/texmf
        fi

Dan