3.2 Local stuff

If you want to store local stuff like additional style files, you may store them in the main texmf tree. But there are some reasons why this isn't a good idea. The most important is that it may cause problems if you make an update of your Web2C distribution since you will have to look properely what files were changed or added by you.

So, the best reason to keep your additional stuff is to build a local texmf tree with your private files (this will also allow to have different TEX environments for different users). To do this, proceed as follows:

Load the file c:\TeX\texmf\web2c\texmf.cnf in an editor. Find the line starting with

 TEXMFLOCAL=

and set it to the name of the local texmf tree where you want to keep your local stuff. An example for a proper setting is

 TEXMFLOCAL=c:/TeX/texmf-local

Find the line beginning with

 TEXMF=

and set it to

 TEXMF={!!$TEXMFLOCAL;!!$TEXMFMAIN}

This setting means, that Web2C will first look for files in your local texmf tree and then in the main texmf tree. The exclamation marks (!!) indicate that Web2C will use the file database (to be exact the will be one file database in the main texmf tree and one in your local texmf tree) to find files. For this reason, don't forget to run mktexlsr to update the file database if you install additional files in your local texmf tree.