Problems may arise when multiple TeX distributions are available on a system, especially if they set environment variables. This may lead to hard to detect problems where other files are used than the ones you expect.

In January, 2007, Gerben Wierda and Jerome Laurens invented a new data structure which allows multiple TeX distributions to coexist on one machine. The user can select the active distribution using a "TeX Distribution" preference panel. The data structure sets a symbolic link, /usr/texbin, which always points to the binaries of the active distribution. Thus GUI programs can be configured once and for all by setting preferences for the binary directory to /usr/texbin, setting preferences to the location of pdftex to /usr/texbin/pdftex, etc.

This data structure is automatically installed by any of the MacTeX packages, or by downloading Gerben Wierda's TeX via i-Installer. It is hoped that in the future all TeX distributions on Mac OS X will adopt this data structure.

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Coexisting with Other TeX Distributions