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Bug#316214: marked as done (/usr/bin/bibtex: bibtex reports an error where it should give a warning)

Your message dated Tue, 28 May 2013 10:15:26 +0900
with message-id <20130528011526.GJ27523@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at>
and subject line closing this bug
has caused the Debian Bug report #316214,
regarding /usr/bin/bibtex: bibtex reports an error where it should give a warning
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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-- 
316214: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=316214
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message --- 
Package: tetex-bin
Version: 2.0.2-30
Severity: normal
File: /usr/bin/bibtex


If you have several .bib files with an entry that appears
in more than one of the files,
bibtex prints a warning message, but returns a final
non-zero return code.
This behaviour of bibtex causes annoying interactions
between different documents that share the same references.

The problem causes trouble with using bibtex within
scripts and make, as they then treat duplicate entries as an error[*].

It is certainly not an error if the duplicated entries
are completely identical.   In that case, bibtex should
return a code of zero, indicating success.   (It should
probably continue to print a warning message.)

IMHO, the proper behaviour for bibtex should be as follows:
(1) Default behaviour:  warning message on identical duplicates,
	but exit code of zero.
(2) If one .bib file entry is a superset of another also
	treat as a warning with a zero exit code.
	I.E. if every key in entry 1 exists (and has the same text)
	in entry 2, but entry 1 may have some extra keys,
	use entry 1 and proceed.
(3) Otherwise, duplicates would give a non-zero exit code.

One could imagine adding command line switches to make it
more severe (i.e. the current behaviour) or lax.

[*] Don't tell me that I'm supposed to clean out all the duplicates,
because I don't necessarily "own" all the .bib files.   Often,
one's collaborators don't take kindly to rearranging all their
.bib files for paper A, just so that *I* can use bibtex within
make in paper B.   

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.11-1-686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)

Versions of packages tetex-bin depends on:
ii  debconf                  1.4.51          Debian configuration management sy
ii  debianutils              2.13.2          Miscellaneous utilities specific t
ii  dpkg                     1.10.28         Package maintenance system for Deb
ii  ed                       0.2-20          The classic unix line editor
ii  libc6                    2.3.2.ds1-22    GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libgcc1                  1:4.0.0-9       GCC support library
ii  libice6                  4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 Inter-Client Exchange library
ii  libkpathsea3             2.0.2-30        path search library for teTeX (run
ii  libpaper1                1.1.14-3        Library for handling paper charact
ii  libpng12-0               1.2.8rel-1      PNG library - runtime
ii  libsm6                   4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X Window System Session Management
ii  libstdc++5               1:3.3.5-13      The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii  libt1-5                  5.0.2-3         Type 1 font rasterizer library - r
ii  libwww0                  5.4.0-9         The W3C WWW library
ii  libx11-6                 4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X Window System protocol client li
ii  libxaw7                  4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X Athena widget set library
ii  libxext6                 4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X Window System miscellaneous exte
ii  libxmu6                  4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X Window System miscellaneous util
ii  libxt6                   4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X Toolkit Intrinsics
ii  mime-support             3.34-1          MIME files 'mime.types' & 'mailcap
ii  perl                     5.8.7-3         Larry Wall's Practical Extraction 
ii  sed                      4.1.2-8         The GNU sed stream editor
ii  tetex-base               2.0.2c-8        Basic library files of teTeX
ii  ucf                      1.18            Update Configuration File: preserv
ii  xlibs                    4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X Keyboard Extension (XKB) configu
ii  zlib1g                   1:1.2.2-4       compression library - runtime

-- debconf information:
  tetex-bin/upd_map: true
* tetex-bin/cnf_name:
  tetex-bin/fmtutil: true
  tetex-bin/fmtutil-failed:
  tetex-bin/userperm: false
* tetex-bin/texmf: true
  tetex-bin/updmap-failed:
* tetex-bin/hyphen: ngerman[=naustrian-neue_Rechtschreibung], french[=patois]
  tetex-bin/oldcfg: true
* tetex-bin/use_debconf: true
* tetex-bin/groupname: users
  tetex-bin/groupperm: true
* tetex-bin/lsr-perms: true

--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
Hi,

I just found this bug report and I am closing it now out of the 
following reason:
* it is perfectly reasonable behaviour to error out if the same
  bibentry is defined in different .bib files. Bibtex even tells
  you that there was one error message.

* this can and will not be fixed neither by debian nor by upstream TeX Live
  but if at all by the original author of bibtex

Thanks

Norbert

------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREINING, Norbert                               http://www.preining.info
JAIST, Japan                                 TeX Live & Debian Developer
DSA: 0x09C5B094   fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76  A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094
------------------------------------------------------------------------

--- End Message ---
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