1

I currently have a working MacTex 2014 installation and Homebrew installation on OS 10.10.3, and am about to install MacTex 2015. But I'm concerned about permission issues. Both packages install in /usr/local, and Homebrew requires very specific permissions on that directory to function.

Will installing MacTex 2015 change anything in my Homebrew installation? Will it in any way affect how Homebrew works?

orome
  • 45,163
  • 57
  • 202
  • 418
  • Why would the permissions on `/usr/local` even change? – Droppy Jul 01 '15 at 13:14
  • @Droppy: The permissions on `/usr/local` **must** be changed from the OS X defaults in order for Homebrew to function at all. Doing so is (often) a bit more complicated than it should be. But everything works fine here (and has for a while). The question is whether MacTex messes with these permissions at all since (by default, when installed on a non-Homebrew OS X system) it would have (and might expect, or even think it requires) different permissions. – orome Jul 01 '15 at 13:17
  • But that doesn't answer my question; if `/usr/local` already exists and MacTex puts stuff into `/usr/local/bin`, `/usr/local/share`, or whatever, then there is no need for it to touch `/usr/local` at all, hence no risk of it changing the permissions. If it does, then I would assume the installer is broken. – Droppy Jul 01 '15 at 13:19
  • @Droppy: So it you know from experience that it doesn't change any permissions? The question is not about what you think ought to happen, it's about what is know to happen, from experience. – orome Jul 01 '15 at 13:23
  • Or you could try it and fix the permissions if they get messed up? That would probably have been quicker. But anyway you'll probably get more hits on http://apple.stackexchange.com as it's not really a programming question. – Droppy Jul 01 '15 at 13:25
  • @Droppy:Very helpful, thanks! – orome Jul 01 '15 at 14:27

1 Answers1

3

No, MacTex installs to /usr/local/texlive, and installing it won't change permissions on /usr/local or any other subdirectories of /usr/local.

mipadi
  • 398,885
  • 90
  • 523
  • 479
  • 1
    My experience is contrary - look at the first 4 lines of https://gist.github.com/kenahoo/a0d2c48d60b1f22a0c70 , it seems to indicate that the 'org.tug.mactex.texlive2015' package (part of MacTeX) wants `/usr/local` to have mode 0755 and group 0. Which is not compatible with homebrew. – Ken Williams Oct 09 '15 at 04:03