Allow to customize installation directory for TinyTeX installed with quarto

[cderv]

Discussed in #11748

^{Originally posted by averms December 28, 2024}

Use quartoDataDir for TinyTeX (Original Title)

Description

On Linux, Quarto already follows the XDG Base Directory spec, which is very nice. It results in a clean $HOME. However, the one place it doesn't is when installing TinyTeX. It would be great if TinyTeX was also installed following the XDG Base Directory spec just like everything else. This would put it in XDG_DATA_HOME/quarto, right next to chromium.

I understand that upstream TinyTeX already has defaults and there is value in sticking to them. However, I noticed that you guys don't even use the upstream script and don't add the binaries to the user's PATH so you're already deviating from upstream.

Note about TinyTeX and its ecosystem

Default install path

• TinyTeX can be installed its install scripts, through R tinytex::install_tinytex() or through quarto install tinytex
• For now defaults installed path are aligned
• Linux: ~/.TinyTeX
• Mac: ~/Library/TinyTeX
• Windows: %APPDATA%/TinyTeX

Quarto does install by default in the same place is no existing version if found in those default place. This allows for Quarto to re-use an existing install done with R or using install script.

Custom install path

• Install script allows to customize using TINYTEX_DIR
• R install can be customized using tinytex::install_tinytex()
• For now quarto install tinytex can't be customized.

In case of customization, quarto won't be found

I believe we should at least offer a way to customize installation, either through TINYTEX_DIR env var, or through command line flag to quarto install tinytex

[ianpittwood]

+1 on this issue. It would be very helpful to be able to customize this install location.

Managing the tinytex installation with Quarto is great as an individual user or on a personal device since it always installs to the user directory. However, the current behavior presents a rough edge for configuring server installations, such as those done alongside Posit Connect. In builds such as image builds, we frequently preinstall Quarto while operating as root to a location with global read/execute permissions. Installing and later using Quarto in this way is fine, but if we also run quarto install tinytex as root it will be installed to /root/.TinyTeX. This can later cause permissions errors if a non-root process calls a binary located in /root/.TinyTeX.

Right now our only ways around the issue while still utilizing Quarto are to move the TinyTeX installation to a different path or to temporarily replace the value of $HOME with the path we would like to use. Unfortunately, both methods cause Quarto to lose track of TinyTeX as a managed tool so commands like quarto update tinytex can no longer be used. A TINYTEX_DIR environment variable or flag would be a great solution to fixing this issue for cases where the TinyTeX installation should be available globally.

[bhattmaulik]

This feature would be helpful in my case also. TinyTeX (the LaTeX compiler) depends on TeX Live, which had annual freeze recently. After this freeze, they release the new version of all the packages. Because of this, I uninstalled TinyTeX and reinstalled it (both the processes through tinytex R package). But I was unable to do it because I wanted the "TinyTeX-2" bundle (which has more LaTeX packages included in it). Therefore, I downloaded the bundle directly from the website of www.yihui.org. Then I extracted the bundle manually (i.e., outside of R).
To check whether my TinyTeX installation was working, I attempted tinytex::is_tinytex() function, which showed FALSE. At this point, if I had an easy way to specify that my TinyTeX files are at this particular directory (e.g., C:/users/TinyTeX), I could use TinyTeX directly after this manual installation. Instead, I had to search stackoverflow and Posit Community to find out where TinyTeX files are generally stored. I copied the TinyTeX folder, and pasted it to that required folder. Only after this, the tinytex::is_tinytex() showed TRUE.

[cderv]

@bhattmaulik Thanks for sharing your experience! Let me try to explain what we have so that you should have needed to follow all your manual step.

But I was unable to do it because I wanted the "TinyTeX-2" bundle

Why were you unable to do it? You can use tinytex::reinstall_tinytex()

The following would reinstall the same version as Quarto.

tinytex::resintall_tinytex(bundle = "TinyTeX-2", version = "latest")

You could also do quarto update tool tinytex

Therefore, I downloaded the bundle directly from the website of www.yihui.org. Then I extracted the bundle manually (i.e., outside of R).

If you want to install a bundle (for example, in offline mode), tinytex:::install_prebuilt() will put it in the right place.

At this point, if I had an easy way to specify that my TinyTeX files are at this particular directory (e.g., C:/users/TinyTeX), I could use TinyTeX directly after this manual installation.

tinytex::is_tinytex() will check that the version found is TinyTeX. It will look for tlmgr in PATH. If not, it won't find it. There is some way to configure the tinytex R package so that a specific installation is considered in PATH when tinytex is run.

But for the version not installed by Quarto, tlmgr needs to be in PATH. This means that <install_path>/tlmgr path add needs to be run. This is the usual setup for Tex Live manual installation.

Instead, I had to search stackoverflow and Posit Community to find out where TinyTeX files are generally stored. I copied the TinyTeX folder, and pasted it to that required folder. Only after this, the tinytex::is_tinytex() showed TRUE.

You could have also looked at TinyTeX R package documentation and read some code. Package is open source, and you can see how tinytex::is_tinytex() works. Default path can be retrieved by tinytex:::default_inst(). Basically you have manually done what tinytex::install_tinytex() is doing

• Downloading
• Unzipping
• Moving install in default location.

However, you are probably missing some configuration, and you missed the reinstallation of all packages done by tinytex::reinstall_tinytex().

Overall, next time, you should try using the tools provided by Quarto or the Tinytex R package for automatic or manual installation. Doing everything manually is indeed more complex.

I hope it helps you understand why you need to do some manual steps.

Regarding this issue, setting a custom path for installation would probably not change anything as tlmgr would always need to be put in PATH, which would have solved your issue.

Thanks again for sharing your experience !

[bhattmaulik]

Thank you @cderv sir for the detailed explanation.

Why were you unable to do it? You can use tinytex::reinstall_tinytex().

That was exactly my thought when I started the process. But when I was trying to install TinyTeX through the tinytex R package, it stopped the process in-between. In the progress bar, it would reach 40%-41%, and then went back to 1%. When this happened 3 times, I decided to handle the process outside of R. I believed that it was a connection issue. So, I used a download manager program to download the TinyTeX-2 bundle, so that even if I lose the connection, it would resume from where the process stopped.

The two other functions you mentioned in your answer, which contain triple colons (:::) are new to me. (tinytex:::install_prebuilt() and tinytex:::default_inst()). I surely need to use these functions if similar issue happens next year.

Thanks a lot once again for your support.

[cderv]

The two other functions you mentioned in your answer, which contain triple colons (:::) are new to me.

Yes they are internals, but install_prebuilt() is probably mentioned in several issues about connection issue. So you should remember this one if you need a offline installation next time.