Sanjoy—thanks for pointing me to the thread. I must have missed it the first time around. I inserted Hans’ f.write("#{program} #{callname} \"$@\"\012") in my texmfstart, changing the original 012 to 015 as Taco suggested for the Mac. But now I get syntax error near unexpected token `"#{program} #{callname} \"$@\"\015" whenever I run texmfstart. (The same, if I restore 012 as well.) I am running Mac OS X 10.4.7. In any case, I have probably misunderstood the thread. Has a summary been posted somewhere that I might consult? Alan On Aug 6, 2006, at 9:39 AM, Sanjoy Mahajan wrote:

...

kpsewhich: option `--expand-var' requires an argument

See the Ubuntu installation thread a couple weeks ago (search for TEXMFLOCAL and Ubuntu). The problem is that TEXMFLOCAL isn't being evaluated properly due to quoting differences between Unix and Windows syntax (with ctxtools using the Windows syntax at the moment).

-Sanjoy

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Sanjoy Mahajan wrote:

...

In any case, I have probably misunderstood the thread. Has a summary been posted somewhere that I might consult?

I need to summarize all the Linux installation methods on the Wiki, once I get it all straight in my head. Right now in reality and in my head it's a nightmare because of all the flavors (texlive, tetex 2 or 3, etc.) and the gazillion map files that could be anywhere. ConTeXt tries to work everywhere so it has a hard life.

I don't know much about what MacOS X does, but if you're not using a graphical installation method, it should be like BSD 4.[0123] Unix that I once used. In which case it should work mostly like Linux.

Here's what I do now and did just half hour ago to update to the 2006.08.08 version. I use bash (a mostly sh-compatiable shell), which the MacOS terminal runs too I think. The $ below is my bash prompt and everything after it is what I type:

$ TEXMFLOCAL=/home/sanjoy/texmf texmfstart ctxtools --updatecontext

This fixes the problem that ctxtools uses (I think) Windows quoting in this source line:

tree = `kpsewhich --expand-path $TEXMFLOCAL`.chomp rescue nil

In Unix ruby (like in Perl) the $TEXMFLOCAL is expanded by the shell because of the $, and the result is run by the backticks. Usually TEXMFLOCAL has no setting in the shell or environment so ruby runs the command with $TEXMFLOCAL replaced by an empty string, giving:

kpsewhich --expand-path

So kpsewhich complains that it didn't get an argument for --expand-path (or --expand-var). The long-term fix is to figure out how to quote that works in Windows and Unix, but I don't know how since I don't use Windows.

The short-term hack is to set TEXMFLOCAL just while running ctxtools, which is done by the command above that I run.

So maybe try that using the vanilla distribution (so with \012 restored) and report back what happens and let's see if we can find a fix if something else doesn't work. My computers run Linux but my partner has a MacOS 10.3 machine and I'll use it for ConTeXt experiments if needed.

does this one work ok? (the stupid thing is that kpsewhich is not made for user friendlyness, e.g.\ a natural solution would be to support kpsewhich --expand-path TEXMFLOCAL i.e. it expects an internal var so why not be clever and put the $ in front of it internally; there are more places in kpsewhich where robust cross-platformness can be provided but it has a low priority i guess def locatedlocaltree if System.unix? then tree = `kpsewhich --expand-path '$TEXMFLOCAL'`.chomp rescue nil unless tree && FileTest.directory?(tree) then tree = `kpsewhich --expand-path '$TEXMF'`.chomp rescue nil end else tree = `kpsewhich --expand-path $TEXMFLOCAL`.chomp rescue nil unless tree && FileTest.directory?(tree) then tree = `kpsewhich --expand-path $TEXMF`.chomp rescue nil end end return tree end -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------