Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by bayindirh 2715 days ago
I have a feeling that Apple doesn't want their users to install that kind of development environments, other runtimes, etc. to their MacOS installations. Time Machine also sometimes doesn't Backup these installations correctly.

Similarly, TeX installation is hard and it's forcefully shoehorned on the installation, and you can't do anything better in the current situation.

My solution is to run a Linux VM for these situations. For programming and server-like purposes, a headless minimal installation is fine. For TeX authoring, an XFCE installation is very handy and not impacting battery life in a visible way.
1 comments
cefstat 2715 days ago
> Similarly, TeX installation is hard [...]

Installing MacTeX has always been one of the most straightforward things I can imagine.

link
bayindirh 2715 days ago
It was. When I got my first Mac in 2008, it was very straightforward. When Apple started to tighten OSX security they stumbled a little IIRC (I cannot find the old warnings and notes on the page). Also, around the same time, OSX installer changed, and OS upgrades started to take longer since TeX installation had so many files.

When they were working on these problems, I was in the middle of my Ph.D., and I needed a stable TeX installation, fast. I installed a Linux VM, all my woes went away, and that method just stuck.

I just checked the MacTeX page now, and it looks like they solved the problems I mentioned above, but currently I'm too lazy and need that TeX installation keep working, so I'll not retry it now.

link