[AUCTeX-devel] adventures with --prefix, TeX-data-directory and style files

[Phillip Lord]

I recently noticed that the auctex style files were not being loaded.
Following some investigation, I've discovered the cause, and thought I would
relate the story. 


With a bit of fiddling, I tracked the problem down to TeX-data-directory,
which is my case is set wrong, specifically to 

~/emacs/packages/auctex-11.58/auctex

Notice the extra "auctex". Hence the style files were not being found. 

I traced this back to 

(defvar TeX-lisp-directoryr
  (expand-file-name "auctex" (file-name-directory load-file-name))
  "The directory where most of the AUCTeX lisp files are located.
For the location of lisp files associated with
styles, see the variables TeX-style-* (hand-generated lisp) and
TeX-auto-* (automatically generated lisp).")


where the problem is evident. 


I normally install auctex by unpacking the tar ball in ~/emacs/packages
(creating auctex-x.x where x is the version number), and doing ./configure,
make, but no make install. This is how I install most packages and it works
well for me; I just add all directories in ~/emacs/packages to the path
recursively. 

So, I figure, auctex must use one directory structure for packaging (where no
auctex directory exists) and another for installation (where it does). 

So I decided to try the make install option instead. So I move auctex away
from ~/emacs/packages, and try 

./configure --prefix=/home/username/emacs/packages/auctex

which is nearly what was suggested in "Installation for non-privelleged
users". But this appears to be ignored -- make install tries to isntall in
/usr/share...


Anyway, I was left feeling a little confused. Could I suggest the following?



(defvar TeX-data-directory
  (let ((installed (expand-file-name "auctex" (file-name-directory 
load-file-name)))
        (local (expand-file-name (file-name-directory load-file-name))))
    (cond 
     ((file-readable-p installed)
      installed)
     ((file-readable-p local)
      local
      (t
       (error "Unable to find TeX-data-directory"))))))


Failing this, even the addition of an error message would be good. It took me
quite a while to track this down because the cause of the problem is quite a
way from where it becomes apparent (that is, style files don't work). 

Thanks

Phil