[Tex/LaTex] Where does BasicTeX put the texmf directory on OSX

installingmacpackages

I have just installed BasicTeX on OSX 10.5 and I'm trying to locate the texmf directory to copy the llncs (LaTeX .cls and .sty files) folder into.
According to the install log the location should be ~/Library/texmf, but this folder does not exist.

So where are the packages stored on OSX?

Background: the llncs package is not in the usual repositories so it cannot be installed with any of the package-management tools. On the Windows machine at work I use MikTeX and installed the package manually by copying it to the texmf directory and updating the DB as explained in How can I manually install a package on MiKTeX (Windows).

Best Answer

The "personal tree" on Mac OS X is rooted in the Library folder for each user. However the installer doesn't touch the users' home directories, so the

~/Library/texmf

folder has to be created. Inside it one has to rebuild the usual TDS structure, so llncs.cls should go into

~/Library/texmf/tex/latex/llncs

and all folders must be created manually. So, open Library in your folder, create texmf, open it, create tex, open it, create latex, open it, create llncs and finally put llncs.cls in the last created folder.

This is necessary in order that the TeX programs can correctly find the file.

Note that no "hashing" operation needs to be performed: the "personal tree" is always searched, since it's assumed not to be very big.

On GNU/Linux systems one should omit the "Library" level.

Related Question