Building biblatex-biber (again)
I recently posted some information on building biblatex-biber. Since then, v0.5 of biblatex-biber has appeared and there are some positive changes. The code now creates its own file to grab the required Perl modules. So on Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) and Ubuntu (9.10) all I needed to do after downloading the source was
perl Build.PL sudo ./Build installdeps ./Build ./Build test sudo ./Build install
at the Terminal. The second step grabbed all of the modules needed and everything worked fine.
On Windows, life is still a bit complicated but I now can get things to work. A bit of a trawl on the Internet led to a blog post about Text::BibTeX. At the moment, the solution is still in beta and so there is a bit of work to do. With Strawberry Perl installed I went to the Command Prompt (as Administrator) and started the cpan program. At its prompt I did
install Config::AutoConf Capture::Tiny IPC::Run install A/AM/AMBS/Text/Text-BibTeX-0.40_3.tar.gz
which all seemed to work. After downloading and unzipping the source for biblatex-biber (which is in .gz format, so use something like 7-Zip to open it), still as Administrator at the Command Prompt I did
perl build.pl build installdeps build build test build install
and everything worked. So I’ve finally got it working across all platforms. Hopefully the Text::BibTeX install will become easier when it moves from beta status.
Do you know how to build Biber without administrative privileges on Linux? I tried to install the required dependencies, but the installation process fails without sudo. I have no Perl experience at all, but I bet it is possible somehow, given that even TeX Live can be installed as an unprivileged user.
phi
3 Mar 10 at 12:31 pm
Hello Phi,
The issue is going to be the required Perl bits and pieces: I think the build process itself should be fine. This does seem to be something people have addressed, for example
http://perl.jonallen.info/writing/articles/install-perl-modules-without-root
Joseph Wright
3 Mar 10 at 1:23 pm
Thanks, that did the trick.
phi
4 Mar 10 at 4:17 pm
Things seem to work the same way with v0.5.2, I’m pleased to say.
Joseph Wright
5 Mar 10 at 1:47 pm
hi,
don’t know why, but for me things wouldn’t work on Mac OS X 10.6 until I finally found this page, and follow the Windows (!) instructions, i.e installing Config::AutoConf first — and then go back to ‘normal’ OS X installation.
Thanks !
b.
benjamin
28 Mar 10 at 11:07 pm
Well, I’m no expert as I say. I’ve run things through a few ways, and although I did my best to have a “clean” 10.6 installation I didn’t do things that carefully. Glad it worked in the end!
Joseph Wright
29 Mar 10 at 7:19 pm
[...] system on Windows, and so had the opportunity to try a clean build of biblatex-biber. I’ve posted before about building this on various platforms, and it now is almost asstraight-forward on Windows as on [...]
Building biblatex-biber on Windows at Some TeX Developments
1 Apr 10 at 12:14 pm