Change TEXMFHOME per-user
It's not clear from the question whether you have admin access to the master texmf.cnf
file. If you do, then this is easier than if you do not!
Admin access available
In the case where for example you have a single-user machine and so write access to texmf.cnf
in the installation directory, this is doable with no variable setting. You can find where this is using kpsewhich texmf.cnf
: I see
palladium:~ joseph$ kpsewhich texmf.cnf
/usr/local/texlive/2012/texmf.cnf
You can then edit this file (with sudo
if needed) and alter the TEXMFHOME
line to point to where you want.
Admin access not available
The more common case, I think, if wanting to set things here is when you do not have admin access which is exactly why you want to set on a per user basis. Here, it seems you have to set at least one variable. There are two approaches.
The first is to set TEXMFHOME
directly. This is clearly pretty easy, and is the recommended method unless you need to do more complex things.
The second approach is to set your system up to use a per user texmf.cnf
file. This can go in a location of your choosing, but you will need to set the TEXMFCNF
variable with something like
export TEXMFCNF=~/.texmf-config/web2c:
where the :
is important as it makes this an additive change. You can then create a texmf.cnf
file in this new location, and add whatever settings you want there (TEXMFHOME
is just one possible). There is more detail on this in http://people.debian.org/~preining/TeX/TeX-on-Debian/ch2.html#s-sec-user-config-files.