Decision Guidance ⇒ MacTeX fails to overwrite Fink Installation

[wegelin]

Today I downloaded and installed MacTeX, which has a file date of 30 May 2013. I installed by opening the "MacTeX.pkg" and going through all the dialog boxes, agreeing to everything and clicking "continue", etc. It said that it had installed.

But that does not seem to have updated my LaTeX in the least. I run LaTeX by typing "pdflatex myfile.tex" on the Unix command line. Before this installation, the first line of my LaTeX log file read as follows:

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This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.3-1.40.12 (TeX Live 2011/Fink) (format=pdflatex 2013.4.12)  18 OCT 2013 12:39
 
 
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After installation, I ran LaTeX and the first line of the resulting log file read as follows:

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This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.3-1.40.12 (TeX Live 2011/Fink) (format=pdflatex 2013.4.12)  18 OCT 2013 22:14
 
 
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Thus, LaTeX does not appear to have been installed or updated at all, at least not command line LaTeX.

Pertinent info about pdflatex on this machine:

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~> which pdflatex  | xargs ls -lT
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  admin  6 Apr 12 15:59:37 2013 /sw/bin/pdflatex -> pdftex
~> which pdftex | xargs ls -lT
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  admin  1469100 Apr 12 15:57:58 2013 /sw/bin/pdftex
~> which pdftex | xargs file
/sw/bin/pdftex: Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
~>
 
 
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What must I do to update LaTeX on my Mac? Or to overwrite an old installation with the MacTeX distribution?

[Johannes_B]

Hi, i would suggest to look at the MacTeX FAQ.

I nearly have no experience with Macs, but i fear you first have to deinstall the "old" MacTeX. You can keep it if you want, but then you to set the PATH right.

Best regards
Johannes

[wegelin]

The MacTeX FAQ, QM.04 and AM.04abc, seems to deal with this issue. It says:

MacTeX installs a symbolic link to the TeX Live binaries named "/usr/texbin". Calling "/usr/texbin/pdftex" will reach the pdfTeX in TeX Live. Once this version runs, it will not be confused by the presence of Fink or MacPorts and will use the correct libraries, style files, fonts, and utilities in TeX Live.

I had to change my $PATH variable, and once that was done, things worked.

Thank you for pointing me to these FAQs.