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

[David Kastrup]

Nicolas Richard <address@hidden> writes:

> David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:
>> There is even a section "Advice for the non-privileged user" that goes
>> into considerably more detail for this use case.
>>
>> 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.
>
> I'll try to answer from my own experience.
>
> I remember I found it difficult to find the right set of options,
> because the meaning of each wasn't super clear[*] (probably because I
> am/was not enough used to the emacs or tex parlance) and I didn't know
> which ones I had to specify.
>
> Now that I have just re-tried installing, I think the real problem was
> that the above was combined with the fact that I can't use the usual
> shortcut ~ in my paths :

Well, ~ does not work within quotes, and since paths can contain spaces,
one needs to quote everything when processing stuff.  Since people can't
even _avoid_ having spaces in file names on Windows systems (stuff like
"My Programs" or similar are given automatically), we need to be able to
deal with spaces.

I won't rule out that there is a possibility to let ~ through unquoted
in some contexts and get mostly correct behavior, but if you do things
like

    sudo make install

and suddenly everything lands with a different user than configure
thought, stuff will not be pretty either.

What I'm saying is that "fixing" this without breaking other things
might involve a whole lot more of work than bargained for.

-- 
David Kastrup