>>>>> On Fri, 28 Nov 2008, Andrey Grozin wrote:

> Some time ago, some Gentoo TeX guru (don't remember who) advised to 
> include the following code to the sci-mathematics/maxima ebuild:

> [...code...]

This code calls "kpsewhich" which means that the location of files
installed by the ebuild will depend on the user's configuration.
IMHO this is not a sane situation. (And the configuration may even
change after installation of the package.)

> So, probably, this code is an unneeded over-generalization, and
> should be simply replaced by the hard-coded /usr/share/texmf-site in
> both maxima and asymptote.

We had similar code in app-emacs/auctex, but replaced it by hardcoded
TEXMF="/usr/share/texmf-site" about one year ago.

Ulrich