TeX Live supports Mac OS X, but no prior Macintosh versions. (If you are running an older Mac version, you can view the files by installing the Joliet system extension available from http://www.tempel.org/joliet; however, the TeX Live binaries will not run.)
Installation of TeX under Mac OS X can be done in two ways:
Each of these is described in a following section.
In addition, typical use of TeX under Mac OS X goes through a frontend. This is also described below.
The i-Installer is included in the TeX Live distribution as an alternative to normal installation. It does not use the contents of the TeX Live distribution at all; instead, the system (approximately 70 megabytes) is downloaded over the Internet.
One advantage of i-Installer is that it makes updates relatively painless. If you are interested, please see the i-Installer TeX home page at http://www.rna.nl/tex.html.
To use it, mount ./MacOSX/II2.dmg. Read the documentation, launch it, and install at least TeX Foundation and TeX Programs. The first will finish without configuration, as soon as the second is installed you will be presented with a graphical interface to setting up your TeX system.
The i-Installer distribution uses the teTeX texmf tree with some additions. Due to differences between TeX Live and teTeX you cannot update a TeX Live installation with an i-Installer TeX Programs i-Package.
In order to run the installation scripts under Mac OS X, you need to have the bash shell installed. If you are running Mac OS X 10.2 or later, you have bash, and can proceed. If you’re running an earlier Mac OS X version, however, the default shell is zsh, which won’t work; please see the subsection 5.4 (p. 33) below for instructions on installing bash.
Once you have bash, the Unix installation documentation in the previous section can be followed. See section 3 on p. 13; Mac OS X-specific notes are included where needed.
Using TeX on a Macintosh typically goes through a front end program, comprising an execution shell, editor, previewer, and other facilities. Here are the principal frontends:
The frontends use /usr/local/teTeX as the default location; therefore, you must either install TeX Live there, or change the configuration of the frontend.
Mac OS X versions 10.1 and earlier do not include bash by default, and the default shell does not run the TeX Live installation scripts properly. This section explains how to install bash.
First, check if bash is already installed. ‘Launch Terminal’ ( /Applications/utilities/Terminal) and type rehash; which bash. If the answer is a filename (for example, /bin/bash), then bash is already installed, and you’re done here; go back to the main installation instructions. If the answer is bash: command not found, proceed here.
There are two ways to install bash if you need it — via the GUI or via command line.
To install via GUI, double-click the MacOSX/bash.dmg file in TeX Live. The disk image (volume) will be mounted. Then start the i-Installer application on that volume. You will be asked to authenticate; if you have never seen that before, you might not have enough privileges to install. Just enter your own user name and password. Hit install. Bash will be installed on your system.
To install via command line:
After using either installation method, be sure to recheck that bash is installed with rehash; which bash in a new Terminal window.