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Re: What gets put in ~/.Mathematica and why?

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg122720] Re: What gets put in ~/.Mathematica and why?
• From: A Retey <awnl at gmx-topmail.de>
• Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2011 05:54:11 -0500 (EST)
• Delivered-to: l-mathgroup@mail-archive0.wolfram.com
• References: <j95ph1$m8b$1@smc.vnet.net>

Hi,

> I just fooled around with CUDA on my system for the first time, and in
> the process I got the message "Loading from Wolfram Research server"
> and it appears that a *lot* of stuff was downloaded. As far as I can
> tell it went into my *home* directory, into /home/mike/.Mathematica/
> Paclets. My .Mathematica directory is now, by far, the biggest thing
> in my whole directory structure.
>
> I don't understand why this stuff didn't go into /usr/local/Wolfram.
> Now this huge amount of stuff, is going to get backed up every time I
> back up my personal directory.

This is most probably because usually a regular user usually does not 
have write permission in /usr/local/Wolfram. You could try whether that 
stuff will go there if you do it as root, but I don't think it will. I 
would expect that if you move those directories from 
/home/mike/.Mathematica to the correct directory within 
/usr/local/Wolfram that everything will work alright except when an 
update of the paclet is necessary...

> I'm curious if anyone can tell me what makes this (or any given
> information) go into .Mathematica in my directory vs the "system"
> place.
>
> If it makes a difference, I'm using Mathematica 8.0.0.0 Home Edition on Fedora
> 14 (32 bit)

Unfortunately the paclet mechanism is hardly documented at all, there is 
no obvious or documented way to change that behavior (although I'm 
almost sure there is a possibility to change it). What you could do is 
to move the Paclet directory to a place of your choice, make sure you 
have read and write permissions there and then use a symbolic link in 
your /home/mike/.Mathematica which points to that location. I have not 
tested this but would be very surprised if it wouldn't work. You would 
then collect all the paclet data in a place which would not necessarily 
be in your personal backup.

hth,

albert