[AUCTeX] Package doesn't recognize my Fink teTeX installation

[Chad Groft]

Hi!  I hope someone on this list can help me get AUCTeX and preview- 
latex working.

I'm on a Mac, currently using OS X 10.4, and I use Fink for a number  
of packages, including ispell and teTeX.  I did not install Emacs  
through Fink, however, because they're stuck on version 21.2 and I  
don't care for the X11 interface.  Instead, I've installed the Carbon  
version of Emacs, which functions as a standalone Mac application.   
I've also installed AUCTeX manually, to work with this version of  
Emacs -- and it does, except that it doesn't find my teTeX  
installation.  (For the record, I installed all of these just  
yesterday, including the CVS version of Emacs, so they should be up  
to date.)

The general problem is that Fink installs its packages into a  
separate directory /sw/bin, which is not included in the usual  
$PATH.  Fink's setup includes creating a file called ".profile" in my  
home directory which adds /sw/bin (among others) to $PATH when I work  
in Terminal.  Emacs, though, doesn't look at this file at all, and  
thus doesn't normally see the outside utilities.

In the case of ispell, I was able to fix this by modifying the exec- 
path variable through the customize utility.  teTeX is a bit  
different; emacs tries to invoke these programs by starting a shell,  
one which looks at .bashrc instead of .profile.  I simply  
made .bashrc a hard link to .profile, which fixed the problem -- *if*  
I don't load AUCTeX.  If I do, I get an error of the form "LaTeX  
exited abnormally with code 127" etc., which it seems means that  
LaTeX never actually started.

AUCTeX, it appears, also starts a shell to invoke the teTeX programs,  
but it starts one with the command-line option -c -- which causes the  
shell to ignore .bashrc and all other startup scripts, and thus makes  
it difficult to get the $PATH right.  It seemed that the best bet was  
to hack AUCTeX to somehow invoke .bashrc or .profile before running  
latex or so forth, but I don't see how.  I tried changing the string  
in the definition of TeX-shell from "/bin/sh" to "/bin/bash", and I  
tried changing the string in TeX-shell-command-options from "-c" to  
""; neither of these worked.

Has anyone been able to get this method to work?  Does someone  
possibly have a more elegant method?  And does anyone know of  
additional issues with preview-latex (just in case)?

TIA,
Chad

--
Chad Groft        address@hidden