[R-SIG-Mac] checking for pdflatex

Tue Mar 17 12:02:39 CET 2015

Gábor Csárdi <csardi.gabor at gmail.com> writes:

> John,
>
> my guess is that on OSX, >95% of the users have https://tug.org/mactex/,
> which seems to have pdflatex in /usr/texbin. If it is not there, then most
> likely the user does not have pdflatex installed, and you can give a note
> or warning about it.
>
> If you want to be sure, you can check other tex distributions for OSX, to
> be honest I don't know any other. Based on
> http://mactex-wiki.tug.org/wiki/index.php/Distribution_Matrix pretty much
> MacTeX is the only player. Maybe people also install TeX with brew, so it
> might be worth checking that, too.

Brew does not support LaTeX, as there is MacTex. But brew-cask does, but
it installs the originally binary and also links the binaries to
/usr/texbin/.

Cheers,

Rainer

>
> Gabor
>
> On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 12:25 PM, John Fox <jfox at mcmaster.ca> wrote:
>
>> Dear Simon,
>>
>> Thanks for this, and to the others who responded to my question. The FAQ
>> and Matt Denwood's response jogged my memory, and reminded me that I
>> encountered this problem before.
>>
>> In this case, I don't see a good solution, but I'll think about the
>> problem some more.
>>
>> Without providing too many tedious details, the development version of the
>> Rcmdr package checks at startup what resources are available to it,
>> including pdflatex, and configures itself accordingly. Having inexperienced
>> users edit, e.g., their .Renviron files is probably a non-starter. The
>> Rcmdr could offer to do this at the user's option (it already provides
>> dialogs that guide the user to locations of missing software like LaTeX and
>> pandoc), but I'd still have to be able to figure out whether pdflatex is
>> available and if so where it's located.
>>
>> Ian Gow suggested using locate, but I apparently can't rely on a locate
>> database having been compiled -- it wasn't on my Mac -- and the overhead of
>> compiling the locate db is excessive for a start-up check.
>>
>> Again, thanks for explaining the problem.
>>
>> John
>>
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: Simon Urbanek [mailto:simon.urbanek at r-project.org]
>> > Sent: March-16-15 10:39 AM
>> > To: John Fox
>> > Cc: Ian Gow; r-sig-mac at r-project.org
>> > Subject: Re: [R-SIG-Mac] checking for pdflatex
>> >
>> > John,
>> >
>> > see R for Mac FAQ 10.13: I get “command not found” in the GUI yet it
>> works
>> > in the Terminal – why?
>> >
>> > Cheers,
>> > Simon
>> >
>> >
>> > > On Mar 15, 2015, at 6:21 PM, John Fox <jfox at mcmaster.ca> wrote:
>> > >
>> > > Dear Ian,
>> > >
>> > > Thanks for this. Please see below:
>> > >
>> > >> -----Original Message-----
>> > >> From: Ian Gow [mailto:iandgow at gmail.com]
>> > >> Sent: March-15-15 5:07 PM
>> > >> To: John Fox
>> > >> Cc: r-sig-mac at r-project.org
>> > >> Subject: Re: [R-SIG-Mac] checking for pdflatex
>> > >>
>> > >> I think it's driven by the PATH variable, which appears to differ for
>> > >> me between RStudio and R from Terminal on the one hand and R.app on
>> > >> the other.
>> > >
>> > > Yes, I understand that, though I don't understand why there's a
>> > > difference in the path.
>> > >
>> > >>
>> > >>> Sys.getenv("PATH")
>> > >> [1] "/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin"
>> > >>> Sys.which("pdflatex")
>> > >> pdflatex
>> > >>       ""
>> > >>
>> > >> If I add
>> > >>
>> > >> Sys.setenv(PATH=paste(Sys.getenv("PATH"),"/opt/local/bin", sep=":"))
>> > >>
>> > >> to ~/.Rprofile then R.app finds pdflatex (from MacPorts in my case).
>> > >>
>> > >>> Sys.which("pdflatex")
>> > >>                  pdflatex
>> > >> "/opt/local/bin/pdflatex"
>> > >>> Sys.getenv("PATH")
>> > >> [1] "/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/local/bin"
>> > >
>> > > The problem for me is to determine whether pdflatex is installed
>> > > *without* knowing in advance where it's installed. I haven't described
>> > > the purpose of this, and, in the interest of brevity, won't for the
>> > > time-being, but it may also prove necessary to determine where pdflatex
>> > resides.
>> > >
>> > > Best,
>> > > John
>> > >
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >> On 15 Mar 2015, at 16:46, John Fox wrote:
>> > >>
>> > >>> Dear list members,
>> > >>>
>> > >>> I need to determine whether pdflatex is installed and have been
>> > >>> doing that via Sys.which("pdflatex"). This works when R is run in a
>> > >>> terminal window (or in RStudio):
>> > >>>
>> > >>>> Sys.which("pdflatex")
>> > >>>           pdflatex
>> > >>> "/usr/texbin/pdflatex"
>> > >>>
>> > >>> but not from R.app:
>> > >>>
>> > >>>> Sys.which("pdflatex")
>> > >>> pdflatex
>> > >>>   ""
>> > >>>
>> > >>> The session info is the same in both cases:
>> > >>>
>> > >>> -------------- snip ----------------
>> > >>>
>> > >>>> sessionInfo()
>> > >>> R version 3.1.3 (2015-03-09)
>> > >>> Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0 (64-bit) Running under: OS X
>> > >>> 10.10.2 (Yosemite)
>> > >>>
>> > >>> locale:
>> > >>> [1] en_CA.UTF-8/en_CA.UTF-8/en_CA.UTF-8/C/en_CA.UTF-
>> > 8/en_CA.UTF-
>> > >> 8
>> > >>>
>> > >>> attached base packages:
>> > >>> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>> > >>>
>> > >>> -------------- snip ----------------
>> > >>>
>> > >>> Why is the result different? Is there a better way to check for the
>> > >>> presence of pdflatex?
>> > >>>
>> > >>> Any help would be appreciated.
>> > >>>
>> > >>> Thanks,
>> > >>> John
>> > >>>
>> > >>> ------------------------------------------------
>> > >>> John Fox, Professor
>> > >>> McMaster University
>> > >>> Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
>> > >>> http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/
>> > >>>
>> > >>> _______________________________________________
>> > >>> R-SIG-Mac mailing list
>> > >>> R-SIG-Mac at r-project.org
>> > >>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
>> > >
>> > >
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>>
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-- 
Rainer M. Krug
email: Rainer<at>krugs<dot>de
PGP: 0x0F52F982
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