Re: [AUCTeX] how to use the git repository to obtain the latest aucTeX?

[Tassilo Horn]

David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:

Hi David,

> When all else fails, you can always read the documentation.

Ok, ok.  But at least me as a non-excessive user of autotools had to
play with the options in conjunction with the docs to figure out what
goes where.

> Why don't people read it?  Why don't they reference it?  Maybe AUCTeX
> should not use any fallbacks but just refuse to do anything when
> people tell it to install to a hierarchy that they don't actually
> place into their load-path or similar.

Not sure, but at least myself want to keep single-user installs at one
place instead of clobbering them across various different directories,
especially if the packages don't have an uninstall target.  And I don't
mirror the standard FS hierarchy below my home already.  Well, I have
$HOME/bin, but not $HOME/share, etc.

Anyway, it seems a somewhat sensible configure call for most users on a
modern GNU/Linux distro (XDG Base Directory Specification) is:

  $ ./configure --prefix="$HOME/.local" \
                --with-lispdir="$HOME/.emacs.d" \
                --with-texmf-dir=`kpsewhich -var-value=TEXMFHOME`

(or maybe rather --without-texmf-dir, cause TEXMFHOME possibly doesn't
exist, and then configure fails)

which installs lisp

  ~/.emacs.d/auctex.el
  ~/.emacs.d/auctex/

and docs

  ~/.local/share/info/
  ~/.local/share/doc/auctex/

and also creates an empty

  ~/.local/var/auctex/

The preview-latex styles would go into

  ~/texmf/tex/latex/preview/

Now I wonder if it's not possible to call configure with options that
make it suitable to run straight from the release tarball or git clone.
A problem I see is that --lispdir, --infodir and --docdir would need to
have different values for auctex and the nested preview...

Bye,
Tassilo