I just spent 40 minutes trying to get the Bioinformatics class files working under linux. Pain in the ass. The problem is that Ubuntu has moved from teTeX to TeXLive, so things are all different. Canonical have also screwed around with TeXLive and teTeX a little also, so that they can install either; hence you have /usr/share/texmf-texlive rather than /usr/share/texmf. Under no circumstances could I get it to work; it just would not recognise the class file.

I tried:

  • adding it to ~/documents/tex which is my TEXINPUTS. This is my usual technique. Didn’t work.
  • Adding it to ~/texmf which is, apparently, the recommended technique. Didn’t work.
  • Adding it to /usr/share/texmf-texlive and running texhash and makelsr. Didn’t work.
  • Adding it to /var/tex. Didn’t work.
  • Adding it to the same directory as the .tex file. Didn’t work.
  • Swearing a lot. Didn’t work. Didn’t even make me feel better.

LaTeX really irritates me at time; the problem, is been around so long, and much of the documentation that you find on the web is woefully out-of-date. The lack of debugging statements don’t help. It’s really hard. Sometimes, you feel it must have been written by a bunch of idiots.

After 40 minutes, I fixed it. The file is bioinfo.cls, not bioinf.cls.

Originally published on my old blog site.