TeXLive: texlive-bibtexextra missing from texlive-full and newly installed files not found

[angelog0]

I installed texlive-full and tested it to rebuild some documents. It failed for documents which need biber. It prints:

! LaTeX Error: File 'biblatex.sty' not found
[...]
Enter file name:
[...]

Notice that those documents build fine on macOS, GNU/Linux and Windows+WSL: indeed, in the build log I find something like this,

Rule 'biber solutio_majorana': File changes, etc:
   Changed files, or newly in use since previous run(s):
      'solutio_majorana.bcf'
------------
Run number 1 of rule 'biber solutio_majorana'
------------
------------
Running 'biber  "solutio_majorana"'
------------
Latexmk: applying rule 'biber solutio_majorana'...

Have you some workaround for this? thanks.

[Grimler91]

Biber must be installed through clan/cpanm. @jamesb6626 posted detailed instructions on how to succeed here: #981 (comment)

[angelog0]

There, there is not a clean recipe to have biber in Termux. You have to add it as package (texlive-biber?), cannot pretend an user does all that playing with clan/cpanm (which I never used , never had the need to use it). Usually the tlnet repos of TL have biber in e separate package so many GNU/Linux distributions. I never hear that to have biber one needs to install perl module for about 30 min! Anyway I will ask to TL people.

I do not understand why you close my flags without a minimal discussion. I think this is very unfriendly.

[Grimler91]

We generally don't package python/perl/node/ruby/other packages if they are installable through another package manager (like pip/cpan/npm/gem). For perl modules it is also pretty much impossible to cross-compile them for termux due to perl barely supporting cross-compilation (I looked into this when trying to package libapt-pkg-perl but I never got it working). If someone can come up with a way to cross-compile perl modules then a PR is very welcome.

Another possible solution would be if someone compiles biber on device and package it into a deb, but we can't host it on the main repo then since we then don't have a build.sh recipe, so would be needed to be hosted on a third-party repo.

I am sorry that you feel this is an unfriendly repo. Your reports/comments are very welcome. Since there already are open issues reporting basically the same issues I prefer to close the new issues as duplicate of the other ones, to only have to keep track of one issue. Feel free to comment/post remarks on either your issues or the ones I considered duplicates.

Also note that "biblatex.sty" is available in the tlmgr package biblatex, and part of the apt package texlive-bibtexextra.

[angelog0]

@Grimler91 wrote

Also note that "biblatex.sty" is available in the tlmgr package biblatex, and part of the apt package texlive-bibtexextra.

1. Why that package is not installed with texlive-full?

2. After installing it, I get the same error.
   It is installed in $PREFIX/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/latex/biblatex/biblatex.sty, but it fails with

($PREFIX/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/latex/tools/varioref.sty)
[...]  biblatex.sty `File not found`
[...]

This simple test-case reproduces the issue:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{biblatex}

\begin{document}
  Hello!
\end{document}

@Grimler91 wrote:

We generally don't package python/perl/node/ruby/other packages if they are installable through another package manager

Please, summarize clearly the steps, the link, #981, you flagged is not clear.

[Grimler91]

Why that package is not installed with texlive-full?

Ah yes, that's a bug, I have apparently forgotten texlive-bibtexextra among all texlive-full's dependencies. Will fix for texlive 2020.

After installing it, I get the same error.

This happens because $PREFIX/share/texlive/texmf-dish/ls-R hasn't been re-generated, also a bug.. I'll add a postinst script that does this automatically in the next release. In the meanwhile you can run mktexlsr $PREFIX/share/texlive/texmf-dist to regenerate $PREFIX/share/texlive/texmf-dish/ls-R and make newly installed files findeable.

Please, summarize clearly the steps, the link, #981, you flagged is not clear.

I'll look at it when I get some time

[angelog0]

Thanks for the workaround. It fixes the issue with biblatex but not that with biber: now rebuilding some documents fails with biber not found... It is a pity!

[angelog0]

After more than 4 hours I hace built biber but when trying to rebuild my documents it failed with

Latexmk: applying rule 'biber solutio_majorana'...
Rule 'biber solutio_majorana': File changes, etc:
   Changed files, or newly in use since previous run(s):
      'solutio_majorana.bcf'
------------
Run number 1 of rule 'biber solutio_majorana'
------------
------------
Running 'biber  "solutio_majorana"'
------------
INFO - This is Biber 2.14
INFO - Logfile is 'solutio_majorana.blg'
INFO - Reading 'solutio_majorana.bcf'
ERROR - Error: Found biblatex control file version 3.5, expected version 3.7.
This means that your biber (2.14) and biblatex (3.12) versions are incompatible.
See compat matrix in biblatex or biber PDF documentation.
INFO - ERRORS: 1
Biber error: [1911] Utils.pm:320> ERROR - Error: Found biblatex control file version 3.5, expected version 3.7.
Latexmk: Found biber source file(s) [solutio_majorana.bcf]                                                                                                                   Latexmk: Summary of warnings from last run of (pdf)latex:
  Latex failed to resolve 75 reference(s)
  Latex failed to resolve 18 citation(s)
Latexmk: Errors, so I did not complete making targets
Latexmk: Use the -f option to force complete processing,
 unless error was exceeding maximum runs, or warnings treated as errors.

As source, I used https://github.com/plk/biber/archive/v2.14.tar.gz. Where did I go wrong?

[jamesb6626]

Your biber version looks OK, I have 2.14 too and it works fine.
I installed biblatex via tlmgr though, so my biblatex version is 3.14, not 3.12.

Try updating biblatex: $ tlmgr update biblatex

[angelog0]

@jamesb6626, I had other issue with tlmgr See this, so I installed texlive-full...