biblatex-biber-2.6

[ken@…]

New version released on Saturday (fortunately, somebody on texlive asked when the binaries would be updated).

This is again in the current/ directory, previous version is now in the 2.5/ directory.

From the Changelog:

2.6    (2016-09-10)
       * Support for new \ifuniquebaretitle test
       * Sourcemaps can now be restricted to particular refsections
       * Perl 5.24 is now required due to use of postfix deref notation
       * Removed RIS input driver due to lack of use
       * Added extended name format - see documentation
       * Added notfield function to sourcemaps - see documentation

And biblatex-3.5.tds.

[ken@…]

The usual shedload of added perl dependencies.

[ken@…]

One of the required prerequisites is Text::CSV::XS. For that, current is 1.25 ​http://search.cpan.org/~hmbrand/Text-CSV_XS-1.25/ but tar cannot handle that, nor the previous 1.24, nor 1.23 (and versions before th at were from many years ago):

tar: This does not look like a tar archive
tar: Skipping to next header
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors

and using 'view'

" tar.vim version v29
" Browsing tarfile /sources/Text-CSV_XS-1.25.tgz
" Select a file with cursor and press ENTER

tar: Archive is compressed. Use -z option
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

No idea how to handle this.

[ken@…]

Appears to be a problem in firefox ? Everything else I have needed downloaded fine, but for this one I needed to use wget! doubleplus_weird.

[bdubbs@…]

It is weird, but when I first did 'gunzip Text-CSV_XS-1.25.tgz', I could then unpack with tar.

[ken@…]

Replying to bdubbs@…:

It is weird, but when I first did 'gunzip Text-CSV_XS-1.25.tgz', I could then unpack with tar.

Thanks. There are 5 new perl deps required by this version of biber, but to get the tests to pass there will be at least 15 in total (I've got to retest once the first 6 have been installed) - neither CPAN nor many module authors are good at documenting which deps are required for a normal build and which are optional. I did find at least one module which (when I started to run make test) told me some deps were required at runtime.

Stopping this for tonight, might be some days before I get back to it.

[ken@…]

Got a bit further : I've so far installed 15 extra modules to get the tests of each of them to pass, it looks like I need at least another 9. Unfortunately, some modules tell you up front about prerequisites, others fail tests on the first missing module, only to then fail on the second missing module.

I feel like I'm in a maze of perl modules, all with similar names. At the moment, being eaten by a grue has its attractions.

But seriously, I'll come back to this, probably in a few more days.

[bdubbs@…]

I don't know if you use it, but I generally use the 'cpan -i <module>' method. It's still "from source", but relatively painless.

[ken@…]

Replying to bdubbs@…:

I don't know if you use it, but I generally use the 'cpan -i <module>' method. It's still "from source", but relatively painless.

The '-i' appears to be unnecessary. I just gave it a try for *one* of the modules now needed by biber on my test server (so, most/all of the biber deps are missing). With the automatic configuration it pulls in optional as well as recommended dependencies - I got considerably more modules than I was expecting.

And it doesn't help much with working out which modules need a particular dep if it is used by more than one. With a non-automatic config by root, plus restoring to a backup after each added module, it is a possibility. I might try that later, in case I have missed any already-existing deps for new modules, but saving logs, reading them, and restoring to an older backup will be tedious.

I first tried as a user, with minimal options - but it bails on the first failed install.

[ken@…]

It seems to all work fine, at least for my fairly-minimal test documents. Interestingly, all tests now pass.

Now I just need to use CPAN to check if my own build order can be improved - for the moment I've stuck the new parts at the end.

[ken@…]

I haven't finished checking all of the deps yet, and some of it needs manual rebuilds to confirm, but I've now found the main reason for cpan building things I didn't expect: One of the new deps pulls in DateTime::TimeZone. When I built it manually that was at v2.01. It has now advanced several point versions, and in 2.02 it changed from Params::Validate, which is already used by one of the other new DateTime deps to Params::ValidationCompiler which looks as if it needs another huge set of deps.

With luck, I'll finish this before 2.7 comes out (biber releases seem to be approximately quarterly).

[ken@…]

Progress report : I think I've now got a build order which includes all the new required modules (on top of LWP), but I have not yet attempted to work out the dependencies between them. This has caused me so much grief (I found another test dependency a few hours ago which I had not noticed before) that I'll give it another go on my empty test system (can't build biber there, no texlive and no xorg), but it should verify my build sequence.

[ken@…]

Fixed at r17901.

[bdubbs@…]

Milestone renamed