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Tasklist

FS#33034 - [texlive-bin] `biber` command incompatible with biblatex in latest texlive-bibtexextra

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Toke Høiland-Jørgensen (tohojo) - Monday, 10 December 2012, 15:54 GMT
Last edited by Rémy Oudompheng (remyoudompheng) - Saturday, 05 January 2013, 22:10 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Extra
Status Closed
Assigned To Rémy Oudompheng (remyoudompheng)
Architecture All
Severity High
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 15
Private No

Details

Description:
After upgrading to the latest texlive-bibtexextra package (2012.28244-1), `biber` has stopped working. I get the following warning when running biber on a file:

WARN - Warning: Found biblatex control file version 2.1, expected version 1.7

Afterwards, compiling the .tex file fails with errors like this:

! Undefined control sequence.
<argument> ...c@refsection @entry@\blx@slist@name

l.411 \endentry


texlive-bin version is 2012.0-5.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Upgrade to latest texlive-bibtexextra (2012.28244-1)
2. Run latex on a .tex file using biblatex
3. Run biber on the document (warning)
4. Re-run latex (fail)
This task depends upon

Closed by  Rémy Oudompheng (remyoudompheng)
Saturday, 05 January 2013, 22:10 GMT
Reason for closing:  Fixed
Additional comments about closing:  texlive-bin 2012.0-7
Comment by Sebastian Stammler (epinephrine) - Tuesday, 11 December 2012, 01:38 GMT
same here, also after the upgrade today. I get the exact same errors. I wanted to try out installing the aur/biblatex-biber package, as the "current" biber version in use by texlive is only 0.9.9, but the current biber version is 1.4. However, the AUR package wants to pull too many perl deps for my taste ;)
Comment by Sebastian Stammler (epinephrine) - Tuesday, 11 December 2012, 01:45 GMT
BTW, biber belongs to the core package texlive-bin not to texlive-bibtexextra
Comment by Toke Høiland-Jørgensen (tohojo) - Tuesday, 11 December 2012, 14:08 GMT
FWIW, installing biblatex-biber 1.3 from AUR works with the version of biblatex in texlive-bibtexextra. But it really is a major hassle, since it requires building >20 perl packages from AUR as dependencies... And since texlive-bin ships a version of biber, one would think it should be compatible with whats in the other texlive packages... :)
Comment by Sebastian Stammler (epinephrine) - Tuesday, 11 December 2012, 14:26 GMT
Ok thanks, what I expected. I guess the problem is an upgrade of biblatex, which is part of texlive-bibtexextra, without providing a matching biber in texlive-bin. A patch of texlive-bin providing a newer version of biber should solve the problem, shouldn't it? :) These things ought to work out of the box, without installing 25 packages from aur...
Comment by Toke Høiland-Jørgensen (tohojo) - Tuesday, 11 December 2012, 14:45 GMT
> A patch of texlive-bin providing a newer version of biber should solve the problem, shouldn't it? :)

Presumably. I looked at the PKDBUILD, but the source for the texlive-bin package is an Arch-specific rebundling, so updating to a newer version is non-trivial, and the PKGBUILD is not very helpful. Hopefully someone with maintainer chops sees this bug report at some point and can provide an update. :)
Comment by Gustaf Hallberg (ghallberg) - Tuesday, 11 December 2012, 16:38 GMT
Downgrading texlive-bibtexextra (only, not the whole texlive suit) seems to work aswell. The perl flood scared me off ;)
Comment by kei (kei) - Saturday, 15 December 2012, 08:34 GMT
Same problem here. Unfortunately I was too quick with pacman -Sc this time. With downgrading to texlive-bibtexextra-2012.26868-1-any.pkg.tar.xz (the only old package I found on the mirrors) biber breaks on execution.
Comment by Rémy Oudompheng (remyoudompheng) - Saturday, 05 January 2013, 19:49 GMT
Please provide sample files to reproduce the problem. I never used biblatex in my life.
Comment by Toke Høiland-Jørgensen (tohojo) - Saturday, 05 January 2013, 21:51 GMT
These two files should do the trick. Put them somewhere and run this sequence of commands:

latex test
biber test
latex test

the second one should give the above warning, the last one should fail.
   test.tex (0.2 KiB)
   test.bib (0.4 KiB)
Comment by Rémy Oudompheng (remyoudompheng) - Saturday, 05 January 2013, 22:09 GMT
I added the approrpriate version of biber in texlive-bin 2012.0-7.
It is currently in [staging] due to a poppler rebuild.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

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