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From an earlier question of mine, it was determined that one can not obtain the latest version of older releases (ex. TeXLive2010, TeXLive2011). I am upgrading my Mac and would like to know the process of copying over manually the files from a Mac that has TeXLive2010 and TeXLive2011 installed. I'd prefer to not use the Migration assistant, so that I can control exactly what is being updated.

So, what I naively tried was:

  • Copy /usr/local/texlive/2010 and /usr/local/texlive/2011 form old Mac to new Mac.
  • Install TeXLive2012 which created /usr/local/texlive/2012 on new Mac.

On my older Mac I have the following in my Preferences panel:

enter image description here

But on my new Mac I only have TeXLive-2012 shown, and want to know how to get that to show the other two versions.

So, what other files do I need to manually copy over so that I can have access to all three versions? Deleting and reinstalling TeXLive2012 is not a problem.

Notes:

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Peter Grill
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    I'm not in my Mac right now, but I believe the explanation relies inside /Library/TeX. There must be something there that governs the TeX Distribution Data structure. I found some hints here. :) – Paulo Cereda Aug 16 '12 at 17:21
  • You should try copying also /Library/TeX/Distributions/TeXLive-2011.texdist/ – egreg Aug 16 '12 at 23:18
  • @PauloCereda: There were two directories ~/Library/texlive/2010, and ~/Library/texlive/2011. I copied those over (and rebooted), but still only see TeXLive 2012 in the Preferences. – Peter Grill Aug 17 '12 at 04:22
  • @egreg: I also copied over /Library/TeX/Distributions/TeXLive-2010.texdist and /Library/TeX/Distributions/TeXLive-2011.texdist (and rebooted), but still only see TeXLive2012 in the Preferences Pane. – Peter Grill Aug 17 '12 at 04:24
  • @PeterGrill: Interesting, I think it should work. Maybe /Library/TeX/Distributions/TeXDist-description.rtf has some hints on what's happening, but as far as I read the document, the TeX pane in the Preferences should recognize .texdist's automatically. – Paulo Cereda Aug 17 '12 at 12:10
  • @PauloCereda or egreg: You want to post an answer based on these comments. I am pretty sure that my TeXLive2011 is working properly now, and hope that my corrupted TeXLive2012 issues are behind me. – Peter Grill Sep 15 '12 at 08:25
  • PauloCereda or @egreg: You want to post an answer based on these comments. I am pretty sure that my TeXLive2011 is working properly now, and hope that my corrupted TeXLive2012 issues are behind me. – Peter Grill Sep 15 '12 at 08:26

1 Answers1

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You should also copy

/Library/TeX/Distributions/TeXLive-2011.texdist/

which is what the Preference pane uses to know that the distribution is present.

Also the "home" folders referring to variable parts of the distribution should be copied:

~/Library/texlive/2011

but this has minor priority, as it contains things that will be rebuilt in case of need.

egreg
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