It would be appropriate to upgrade the severity of this bug. I just discovered that latex won't run after the installation failure: $ latex irv.tex This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.3.7) I can't find the format file `latex.fmt'! Fortunately there is a work-around: remove texdoctk before attempting the installation. This did produce some errors; I'll file a separate bug. However, latex was usable afterwards.