[R-SIG-Mac] checking for pdflatex
John Fox
jfox at mcmaster.ca
Tue Mar 17 14:18:19 CET 2015
Dear Rainer,
Thanks for this. I already have a more general fix that followed from one of Simon Urbanek's posts yesterday. The sticking point now is having a CRAN package -- the Rcmdr -- mess with the PATH for the R process.
Best,
John
On Tue, 17 Mar 2015 12:02:39 +0100
Rainer M Krug <Rainer at krugs.de> wrote:
> 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/
> >> > >>>
> >> > >>> _______________________________________________
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> >> > >
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> --
> Rainer M. Krug
> email: Rainer<at>krugs<dot>de
> PGP: 0x0F52F982
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