bug#21806: TeX Live: missing biber executable

bug#21806: TeX Live: missing biber executable

[Clément]

Hi,

I have been trying out the guix package manager on top of Debian
Jessie for a few weeks and I ran into a problem installing TeX
Live, namely with the bibtex replacement biber.

TeX Live installs fine, and all the executables are available in
my user profile, except for biber. I digged a bit, and it seems
that while biber is included in the TeX Live texmf-dist tree, it
is not under share/texmf-dist/scripts but
share/texmf-dist/source/bibtex/biber, in a compressed tarball
biblatex-biber.tar.gz, from which biblatex-biber-1.8 can be
extracted. From this directory, I was able to run the perl build
and install tools.



Clément

bug#21806: TeX Live: missing biber executable

[Ludovic Courtès]

Clément <cbarthelemy@fdn.fr> skribis:

> TeX Live installs fine, and all the executables are available in
> my user profile, except for biber. I digged a bit, and it seems
> that while biber is included in the TeX Live texmf-dist tree, it
> is not under share/texmf-dist/scripts but
> share/texmf-dist/source/bibtex/biber, in a compressed tarball
> biblatex-biber.tar.gz, from which biblatex-biber-1.8 can be
> extracted. From this directory, I was able to run the perl build
> and install tools.

Sorry for the late reply.  Maybe we should make it a separate package?
Is the biblatex-biber-1.8.tar.gz available separately upstream?

Thanks,
Ludo’.

bug#21806: TeX Live: missing biber executable

[Clément]

Hi,

Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

> Sorry for the late reply.

My turn to apologise for the delay !

> Maybe we should make it a separate package?
> Is the biblatex-biber-1.8.tar.gz available separately upstream?

Apparently, there has been some discussion about whether or not
to include biber in the Tex Live build due to its high
requirements. The current state of affair is as follow¹ :

    Special considerations for biber

    TeX Live includes biber (a BibTeX replacement for BibLaTeX
    users) executables. These executables bundle the many Perl
    modules which biber requires, using the Par::Packer
    mechanism. This process is described in the biber
    documentation; it isn't feasible to incorporate it in the
    standard TL build.

    So, TL builders who wish to provide it should make and upload
    the binaries as part of the upstream Biber project. These
    binaries are then distributed to CTAN (requires a manual
    request to the CTAN maintainers, usually done by the Biber
    maintainers), and TL imports from CTAN as usual.


So I don't know if building it from source is feasible for
Guix. I could try to have a look, but have zero experience with
Guix or Perl build system. Anyway, the biber package is indeed
available on sourceforge².

There is also a compatibility issue between biblatex and biber
(something like biblatex 2.x → biber 1.x) that we should watch
out for.


1: Described on the Tex Live website https://www.tug.org/texlive/build.html#biber

2: http://sourceforge.net/projects/biblatex-biber/files/biblatex-biber/1.8/biblatex-biber.tar.gz

--
Clément

bug#21806: TeX Live: missing biber executable

[Ludovic Courtès]

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Clément <cbarthelemy@fdn.fr> skribis:

> So I don't know if building it from source is feasible for
> Guix. I could try to have a look, but have zero experience with
> Guix or Perl build system. Anyway, the biber package is indeed
> available on sourceforge².

I gave it a try, and below is an initial patch.  It misses some of the
dependencies required to run the test suite, but that shouldn’t be too
hard to address; the next thing is to address issues reported by ‘guix
lint biber’.  Would you like to give it a try?

Note that I didn’t use the Sourceforge URL because they were all
redirecting to the latest release (2.23), despite the “1.8” or “1.9” in
the URL.

Thanks,
Ludo’.


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diff --git a/gnu/packages/texlive.scm b/gnu/packages/texlive.scm
index 6480b25..23360d5 100644
--- a/gnu/packages/texlive.scm
+++ b/gnu/packages/texlive.scm
@@ -22,7 +22,9 @@
   #:use-module ((guix licenses) #:prefix license:)
   #:use-module (guix packages)
   #:use-module (guix download)
+  #:use-module (guix git-download)
   #:use-module (guix build-system gnu)
+  #:use-module (guix build-system perl)
   #:use-module (guix build-system trivial)
   #:use-module (gnu packages)
   #:use-module (gnu packages bash)
@@ -311,3 +313,23 @@ to manage bibliographic references.  Automatic execution of dvips to produce
 PostScript documents is also included, as well as usage of pdfLaTeX to produce
 PDF documents.")
     (license license:gpl2+)))
+
+(define-public biber
+  (package
+    (name "biber")
+    (version "1.8")
+    (source (origin
+              (method git-fetch)
+              (uri (git-reference
+                    (url "https://github.com/plk/biber")
+                    (commit (string-append "v" version))))
+              (sha256
+               (base32
+                "0vpi11skvixdsp4pc1ppmdqiijv6gfj4cxal3vbwrkk07ah4sxv4"))))
+    (build-system perl-build-system)
+    ;; FIXME: Add module for Perl's Data/Compare.pm etc.
+    (inputs `(("perl-ipc-run3" ,perl-ipc-run3)))
+    (home-page "https://github.com/plk/biber")
+    (synopsis #f)
+    (description #f)
+    (license license:gpl1+)))                     ;GPLv1+ | Artistic

bug#21806: TeX Live: missing biber executable

[Clément]

Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

> I gave it a try, and below is an initial patch.  It misses some of the
> dependencies required to run the test suite, but that shouldn’t be too
> hard to address; the next thing is to address issues reported by ‘guix
> lint biber’.  Would you like to give it a try?

I would indeed! This looks embarrassingly easy, and is as good a
time as any to learn guix packaging

> Note that I didn’t use the Sourceforge URL because they were all
> redirecting to the latest release (2.23), despite the “1.8” or “1.9” in
> the URL.

Noted.

Thank you

--
Clément

bug#21806: TeX Live: missing biber executable

[Ludovic Courtès]

Clément <cbarthelemy@fdn.fr> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> I gave it a try, and below is an initial patch.  It misses some of the
>> dependencies required to run the test suite, but that shouldn’t be too
>> hard to address; the next thing is to address issues reported by ‘guix
>> lint biber’.  Would you like to give it a try?
>
> I would indeed! This looks embarrassingly easy, and is as good a
> time as any to learn guix packaging

Did you have a chance to look into it?  :-)

Ludo’.

PS: See <http://bugs.gnu.org/21806> for the initial discussion.

bug#21806: TeX Live: missing biber executable

[Clément]

Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

> Did you have a chance to look into it?  :-)

I started, but I got scared by the number of dependencies. I
still intend to work on it though, but will be a little short on
time until the end of the month. Is that okay?

Sorry for the delay,

Clément

bug#21806: TeX Live: missing biber executable

[Ludovic Courtès]

Clément <cbarthelemy@fdn.fr> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> Did you have a chance to look into it?  :-)
>
> I started, but I got scared by the number of dependencies. I
> still intend to work on it though, but will be a little short on
> time until the end of the month. Is that okay?

Sure, no problem.  I just wanted to know if you had given up or stumbled
upon a problem where we could help.  :-)

Thanks,
Ludo’.

bug#21806: TeX Live: missing biber executable

[Clément]

Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

> Sure, no problem.  I just wanted to know if you had given up or stumbled
> upon a problem where we could help.  :-)

I think I am nearly there, I have packaged all biber
dependencies, but I still have some trouble with tests and
runpath validation.  I'd like to send the patch to the list see
if someone can help me.  From the history it looks like you
operate on a 'one package, one commit' basis, is that right?


Thanks,

Clément

bug#21806: TeX Live: missing biber executable

[Ludovic Courtès]

Clément <cbarthelemy@fdn.fr> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> Sure, no problem.  I just wanted to know if you had given up or stumbled
>> upon a problem where we could help.  :-)
>
> I think I am nearly there, I have packaged all biber
> dependencies, but I still have some trouble with tests and
> runpath validation.  I'd like to send the patch to the list see
> if someone can help me.

Sure, it’s a good idea.

> From the history it looks like you operate on a 'one package, one
> commit' basis, is that right?

Exactly.

Thank you!

Ludo’.

bug#21806: TeX Live: missing biber executable

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

For the record Biber was added in commit
d400068085ed3cf1a0cb956e25812033a97b7b2c (Nov. 2016).

Ludo’.