[AUCTeX-devel] Determination of value for TeX-macro-private

[Ralf Angeli]

We currently have the following code for determining the value of
`TeX-macro-private':

(defcustom TeX-macro-private (append (TeX-parse-path "TEXINPUTS")
                                     (TeX-parse-path "BIBINPUTS"))
  "Directories where you store your personal TeX macros."
  :group 'TeX-file
  :type '(repeat (file :format "%v")))

On my system this returns nil.  Are $TEXINPUTS and $BIBINPUTS still
widely used for setting the path to personal TeX macros?  To me it looks
like we should rather be using something like
kpsewhich --var-value=TEXMFHOME
or
kpsewhich --expand-var=\$TEXMFHOME
nowadays (and append a "/tex").  However, it's probably not a good idea
to call `kpsewhich' every time tex.el is loaded.  How about getting the
unexpanded value of `TEXMFHOME' at build time and writing that to
tex-site.el (wrapped in a call to `file-exists-p')?  (I'm not sure if
that's possible because until now I've only been able to get the
expanded value.)

-- 
Ralf