[ET Trac] #2638: documentation.tex assume to be a specific location relative to Cactus root directory

[Roland Haas]

#2638: documentation.tex assume to be a specific location relative to Cactus root directory

 Reporter: Roland Haas
   Status: new
Milestone: 
  Version: 
     Type: bug
 Priority: minor
Component: 

Currently the LaTeX documentation files must include a relative path to `cactus.sty` like so:

```
\usepackage{../../../../doc/latex/cactus}
```

which, assuming the “typical” directory layout, accidentally works both when calling `pdflatex` directly \(and manually\) on the LaTeX input file in the source code location and via the various `-ThornDoc` and `-ThornGuide` make targets.

This is however fragile and fails if e.g. the thorn lives in a git repository of its own so that the directory layout is:

```text
Cactus
|
+- repos
   |
   +- ThornRepo
      |
      +- doc
         |
         +- documenation.tex
```

rather than the expected  

```
Cactus
|
+- repos
   |
   +- ArrRepo
      |
      +- Thorn
         |
         +- doc
            |
            +- documenation.tex
```

or \(the initially envisioned one assumes\):

```
Cactus
|
+- arrangements
   |
   +- ArrangeMent
      |
      +- Thorn
         |
         +- doc
            |
            +- documenation.tex
```

One way to handle this is to use conditionals to try both locations:

```tex
\IfFileExists{../../../doc/latex/cactus.sty}
% then
{\usepackage{../../../doc/latex/cactus}}
% else
{\usepackage{../../../../doc/latex/cactus}}
```

which is somewhat cumbersome and only works for those two locations so must be adjusted for each thorn. Another, likely the officially suggested way, is to the `TEXINPUTS` such that `cactus.sty` is directly found. E.g. something like:

```
export TEXTIPUTS=$TOP/doc/latex/:
```

in the Makefile and then use `\usepackage{cactus}` in `documentation.tex`. This however means one can no longer run `pdflatex` directly on the LaTeX sources. There is, since TeX does not actually itself do the searching, no way to set `TEXINPUTS` or a similar thing in TeX files it seems.

`\IfFileExists` may rely on LuaTeX features \(not sure\) and one may even have to resort to pure TeX for say tex4ht to work \([https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/98203/can-i-test-if-a-file-exists](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/98203/can-i-test-if-a-file-exists)\).

--
Ticket URL: https://bitbucket.org/einsteintoolkit/tickets/issues/2638/documentationtex-assume-to-be-a-specific
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