Where in the world is tikzlibraryhobby.code.tex?

Question

I was trying to reproduce Claudio Fiandrino's answer to How can we draw a Hannukah Menorah with decorations, using TikZ?. However, I do not have the hobby package by Andrew Stacey in my local distribution. After reading Update TikZ/PGF on mac and How to install a current version of TikZ?, I looked at the latest TikZ/PGF CVS (build on December 7, 2012) but could not located the hobby package in it. I found the hobby directory but do not know where each file is supposed to go in my distribution.

How do I add the hobby package? In general, what would be the easy way to get any new TikZ package installed in a Mac?

EDIT: I have used the drag-and-drop (mac) method as described below.

(1) Drag pml3array.sty file to /Users/Username/Library/texmf/tex/latex folder.
(2) Drag hobby.code.tex file to /Users/Username/Library/texmf/tex/generic/pgf/math folder.
(3) Drag pgflibraryfpu.code.tex to /Users/Username/Library/texmf/tex/generic/pgf/libraries folder.
(4) Drag tikzlibraryhobby.code.tex to /Users/Username/Library/texmf/tex/generic/pgf/frontendlayer/tikz/libraries folder.

I no longer get the hobby cannot be found error message. But, is this correct?

Answer 1

The easiest way to keep up with your TeX library is to download the TeX Live Utility. You can find it in several places if you Google it; however, if you download the MacTeXExtras file from the MacTeX website you can find a copy of it there along with some other useful applications for LaTeX. Using the TeX Live Utility you can download, update, remove individual packages from a repository you specify or just use the default. You can also simply update your entire TeX Library at once if you like. Hobby is among the available packages in the list, but is not installed by default, so just highlight it and click install.

Answer 2

The hobby library is not part of the core TikZ/pgf bundle, hence will not be found in the TikZ CVS. The code is released to CTAN, which means that it will appear in an 'up to date' TeX Live or MiKTeX package manager for 'managed' installation.

If you need to install the package 'by hand', then from CTAN get the necessary files (all the .tex files and the .sty file except hobby_doc.tex). These need to be installed in your local TeX tree, the details of which vary slightly depending on your operating system. For Linux users, we have How do I install an individual package on a Linux system?, which also has some advice useful for TeX Live users on other platforms. Specific instructions for MiKTeX appear in for example Create a local texmf tree in MiKTeX.

One thing to emphasise here (since it is explicitly mentioned in the question) is that, to a large extent, so long as a file is in TeX's search path then where it is in that path is not important (for an exception see Why isn't kpathsea picking up my local version of a file?). For a user texmf tree (as in the question), it is good practice to have some structure and good practice for that structure to reflect the "standard" structure but by no means obligatory.