How to tell texlive where to look for \input files

Question

On a Windows XP machine, I'm trying to switch from MiKTex 2.9 to TeX Live 2011.

I just installed texlive from the iso DVD image to the directory "C:\apps\texlive".

I have a latex file "tst.tex" in a directory "E:\latex\tst".

Contents of tst.tex:

   \input defaults
   \documentclass[11pt]{article}
   \begin{document}
   Hello world!
   \end{document}

The file "defaults.tex" contains some settings and it resides in the directory "E:\latex\inc".

To build "tst.dvi" I have a batch file "bld.bat" residing in the same directory as "tst.tex" with the following contents:

   @echo off
   set path=C:\apps\texlive\bin\win32
   latex.exe -halt-on-error tst.tex >nul
   pause

Of course it fails since texlive has no idea where to find "defaults.tex".

In MiKTex, I would use the command line option

   --include-directory E:\latex\inc

but it appears that texlive has no such command line option.

I need to somehow tell texlive to look for input files in some central common subdirectory of "E:\".

I very much want to avoid hard-coding the full path for "defaults.tex".

I can make whatever subdirectories of "E:\" are needed, and I can edit bld.bat to set any needed environmental variables.

I would prefer not to make any permanent changes to texlive settings or to the contents of any texlive directories.

How can I resolve this problem?

Thanks in advance.

Update:

As a possible alternative, is it possible to set an environmental variable in my bld.bat file which will tell texlive that my home directory is somewhere on the E: drive, and based on that setting, is there a subdirectory where texlive will automatically search for input files?

For Windows XP, that's the latest, I think. It works fine, my only issue is the problem with customizing the location for input files. — tex_novice, Aug 30 '20 at 12:27
Well you probably can set texinputs. But imho it isn't the best idea to use an 11 years old tex on an outdated OS. You can't expect much support here, and there have been many changes in the past years. — Ulrike Fischer, Aug 30 '20 at 12:54
For now, I'll have to live with the XP version. Apparently texinputs is an environmental variable, so I'll try that. Thanks. — tex_novice, Aug 30 '20 at 13:05
You didn't write how you did set texinputs. Did you replace the backslash by slashed? Beside this you can use the texmf-local or texmfhome tree. — Ulrike Fischer, Aug 30 '20 at 14:57
Or you could use a relative path: \input ../inc/defaults And I believe that 2017 is the latest release which supports xp. — Siep, Aug 30 '20 at 15:09
See also https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/93712/definition-of-the-texinputs-variable — Siep, Aug 30 '20 at 15:11
@Ulrike Fischer: Correcting my earlier comment, if I insert the command "set TEXINPUTS=E:_\TeX_LaTeX_inc:" in my batch file, latex doesn't complain about " \input defaults" but I get the error message "file article.cls" not found. — tex_novice, Aug 30 '20 at 15:44
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/410350/texinputs-on-windows — Ulrike Fischer, Aug 30 '20 at 15:57
@Ulrike Fischer: That link clinched it! I needed a semicolon to terminate the set texinputs command, not a colon. It works now! Thanks very much for the help (and for your patience). — tex_novice, Aug 30 '20 at 16:14
@Siep: I would be happy to switch to a 2017 version of texlive if it will install on Windows XP. Can you provide a link to an iso image? — tex_novice, Aug 30 '20 at 16:19
ftp://ftp.tug.org/historic/systems/texlive/2017/texlive2017-20170524.iso — Siep, Aug 30 '20 at 17:15
@Siep: Using the link you provided, I now have Tex Live 2017 installed and tested on my XP machine. Thank you very much! . — tex_novice, Aug 30 '20 at 21:40
At this point, thanks to Ulrike Fischer and Siep, all my issues with Tex Live are resolved. Should I delete my question or leave it as is? — tex_novice, Aug 30 '20 at 21:45

How to tell texlive where to look for \input files

0 Answers0