[Tex/LaTex] Using MiKTeX and TeX Live on the same computer

incompatibilityinstallingmiktextexlivewindows

Is there anything I should be aware of if I want to install MiKTeX and TeX Live on the same computer? Are there any problems, any incompatabilities? Is it even possible? I imagine there could be some conflict e.g. if I called pdflatex foo.tex — whose pdfLaTeX would that be, MiKTeX's or TeX Live's?

In case it matters, I'm using Windows 7 64-bit and MiKTeX 2.9 is already installed.

Best Answer

You must adapt the PATH-variable if you want to use the "other" system. This should work fine. I have a small TeX Live-like LuaTeX-system for testing and it can even share some roots with my main MiKTeX, MiKTeX doesn't complain about the ls-R-files lying around. The only problem I have is that I sometimes get confused and no longer know which system I'm currently using.

There are thousand of web pages which explain how to change environmental variables permanently. For the current command line window you can use something like this

set path=J:\MiKTeX2.9\miktex\bin;%PATH%

which will put the new path at the front of the path variable. To see the values of the variables use simple set.

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