Hi Johannes,

On Tue Dec 2, 2025 at 12:41 PM CET, Johannes Thyssen Tishman wrote:
> 2025-11-24T16:13:44+0100 Marco van Hulten <marco@hulten.org>:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> Attached is a new port for manipulating BibTeX entries.  I have used it
>> for the last decade or so for sanatising BibTeX entries (typically, for
>> any newly downloaded work) and redirecting this to my BibTeX database.
>> Sometimes I use it to search the database.
>> 
>> For a more complete description of its functionality, see its homepage:
>> 
>> https://www.gerd-neugebauer.de/software/TeX/BibTool/en/
>> 
>> I'd be happy to maintain this.
>> 
>>  Marco
>
> Hi Marco,
>
> Thanks for working on this. I haven't tested bibtool yet since I have
> some initial remarks about the port:
>
> - The trailing en/ needs to be removed from SITES to fetch the sources.
>
> - I'd prefer if HOMEPAGE pointed to the english version of the website,
>   i.e., please add the trailing en/ here. I assume this was your initial
>   intention and accidentally switched it with SITES? With this, you can
>   do SITES = ${HOMEPAGE:S|en/$||}.

Yes, exactly.

> - The kpathsea library is picked up at configure time if found. The
>   install documentation (see install.tex) mentions that the usage of
>   this library is experimental and that it is only used to search for
>   BibTeX files. If you don't need it, maybe we could disable it with
>   CONFIGURE_ARGS = --without-kpathsea, so as to avoid having
>   print/texlive/base as a build dependency?

And as test dependency.  Doing this results in two more tests begin
(successfully) executed that I suppose are there as substitutes for
functionality kpathsea would provide.

In any case, all test still succeed and how I typically use BibTool also
still works, so I'm fine with dropping this dependency.

> - Why is print/texlive/base needed as a runtime dependency?

This was needed for both test and run, because otherwise

  warning: kpathsea: configuration file texmf.cnf not found in these directories: /usr/local/share/texmf-dist/web2c.

but we can leave out the kpathsea dependency, which I do now.

> - Bibtool depends on an old version of the GNU Regular Expression
>   Library that it bundles. I don't know if we could pull this from base
>   or a port. I'd wait for feedback on this.
>
> - Lots of warnings at build time? Can anything be done about this?
>
> I'll try to take another look later if I find some time.

Thank you!  I did not address the last two (harder) issues.

New tarball attached.

 Marco

• bibtool.tar.gz (2K)