Skip to content

Fix missing bibtex binary and fmtutil warning on cached package restore - #32

Open
AadilRn wants to merge 2 commits into
smiths:mainfrom
AadilRn:main
Open

AadilRn wants to merge 2 commits into
smiths:mainfrom
AadilRn:main

Conversation

@AadilRn

@AadilRn AadilRn commented Sep 30, 2026 •

Copy link
Copy Markdown

This fixes the missing citations caused due to the APT package caching action in latex-pages.yml, which skips package installation scripts to speed up workflow runs. Skipping those scripts left the /usr/bin/bibtex symlink missing causing bibtex: not found errors during compilation, rendering all PDF citations as question marks.

In other words, since we are purposefully using caching to skip postinst, the update-alternatives mechanism never generates the symbolic link that points bibtex to bibtex.original.

To resolve, commands were added which links /usr/bin/bibtex to /usr/bin/bibtex.original (or /usr/bin/bibtex to /usr/bin/bibtexu) so the Makefile can compile references from refs/References.bib.

The file also runs sudo fmtutil-sys --byfmt pdflatex upfront to prevent pdflatex from falling back to user mode and printing a fmtutil warning banner. The command pre-generates the format at a system level and stores the binary files in a globally readable directory /var/lib/texmf/, leaving the toolchain in a predictable state.

@CSchank

CSchank commented Sep 30, 2026

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Contributor

@smiths I asked the other team who was complaining about a BibTeX issue to test this out and get back to us. Hopefully we will hear back soon!

@smiths

smiths commented Sep 30, 2026

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Owner

Great idea @CSchank. Hopefully it works for them.

This branch has not been deployed

No deployments
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Labels

None yet

Projects

None yet

Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

3 participants