TeX Live and MacTeX ⇒ TeXLive 2007 - Ubuntu: updating packages

[-Robin-]

I have an Ubuntu 8.10 system and I installed the TeXLive 2007 distribution on it (2008 is not yet available in the Ubuntu repositories).
Now I need to update the caption package, since my document uses commands only available in the latest version of the caption package.
I googled a bit, found some topics on this forum and saw the following solutions:
1) install TeXLive 2008 manually, and use the package manager. But since I'm also using Kile which requires TexLive 2007 if you install it with the Ubuntu package manager, I'm not so happy with this solution
2) install the MikTeX package manager. Seems a bit overkill for just one package which needs to be updated

But I was wondering: is it possible to manually update a package.
I tried the following approach:

• Download the latest version of the caption package and run

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  latex caption.ins

  which generates the files

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  caption.sty, caption2.sty, caption3.sty, ltcaption.sty, subcaption.sty

• Replace the contents of the caption folder:

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  /usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/caption/caption.sty
  /usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/caption/caption2.sty
  /usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/caption/caption3.sty
  

  with the newly generated .sty files

This seems to do something, but not what I wanted. The error message after this, when recompiling my document, stated that it couldn't find the file ltcaption.sty, which I have placed in the caption directory. I think it means it is using the new versions of

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caption.sty, caption2.sty, caption3.sty

but is unaware of the addition of the files

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ltcaption.sty, subcaption.sty

Must I run some extra commands to tell LaTeX the packages have changed ? Or is this a completely wrong manner to update a package ?

Another possible option I thought of was placing the caption folder in my local texmf directory:

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/usr/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/caption

since the MikTeX package manager also puts packages in your local texmf directory. But this didn't worked either. He kept using the old caption package, and I didn't find a way to force LaTeX to first look into my local texmf and use the packages which were placed there.
I think this latest approach, if I could get it working, would be the best and easiest way.

Any suggestions/thoughts ?

[localghost]

[...] Must I run some extra commands to tell LaTeX the packages have changed ? Or is this a completely wrong manner to update a package ? [...] Any suggestions/thoughts ?

Open a shell and refresh the file name database.

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sudo texhash

Check if this process was successful by searching one of the files.

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kpsewhich subcaption.sty

Best regards
Thorsten¹

[-Robin-]

I'll test it first thing in the morning (don't have an Ubuntu system at hand).
But if that works, its just brilliant. Stupid I didn't find that command myself

[meho_r]

Just FYI, you can install TeXLive 2008 without need to uninstall 2007, just make sure that when started installation you tick "create system links" option in the main installation screen. After that, you'll be using 2008 AND Kile

[-Robin-]

Just tested it and it worked like a charm.
Thanks

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Robin,

I'm using the MikTeX package manager and I'm very satisfied with it. I've described my installation on Ubuntu Linux here.

Stefan