Bug#594743: texlive-binaries: pdftex slow to generate sources when $HOME contains a trailing "/".

[Thomas Adam <thomas@xteddy.org>]

On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 12:20:48AM +0900, Norbert Preining wrote:
> Hi Frank!
> 
> On 08/30/2010 12:14 AM, Frank K?ster wrote:
> >Norbert,
> [..]
> >what was the upstream fix you were talking about?  We still have in
> >testing:
> 
> I as talking about what?
> 
> I don't see a bug, it is default behaviour of kpathsea and
> defined and standardized:
> 
> HOME=.../
> TEXMFHOME= $HOME/texmf
> so expands to
> TEXMFHOME ...//temxf
> so everything under ... will be searched.
> 
> That is intended and someone *might* want to have this option.
> 
> OTOH, the op of the latest incarnation said that the *DEFAULT*
> setting of HOME on his Debian system had a final /, which
> is really disturbing and surprisng, and I have NEVER seen
> that before.
> 
> I consider this a none-bug, or better, a feature.

It's tricky to know though when this is a feature.  :)  It's unacceptable to
me, to have to wait in excess of *24 hours* for the package to *install*
because of this bug -- let alone generating a document from sources I'd
written.  I might be more forgiving then, but it's more the installation
problem which affects why this bug is more important.

Note again though that it is perfectly legal for one's HOME to end with a
"/" character -- and just because kpathsea somehow trips over on this means
that it's a special case that needs fixing.  I fail to see how "...//" can
ever be intended behaviour in the way you're suggesting it.  :)

-- Thomas Adam

-- 
"It was the cruelest game I've ever played and it's played inside my head."
-- "Hush The Warmth", Gorky's Zygotic Mynci.