[OS X TeX] Installing bibtool

[David Watson]

On Nov 23, 2009, at 1:49 PM, Jan Erik Moström wrote:

> I'm a bit slow (in all kind of ways ;) and I'm just trying to figure out the MacTeX distribution ... one thing that that I would like to do is to install "bibtool" (not bibtools) but I can't figure out how to do this in a simple way. Using Gerbens TeX distribution it was possible to use the i-installer but now I'm at a loss how to do it.
> 

You can download the source and compile it yourself from http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/biblio/bibtex/utils/bibtool/
(Get the *.gz) file.
Once you have expanded the tar archive, copy the makefile.unx file to makefile, then run
    make
    sudo make install
    sudo make install.man
This will place a working copy and manual pages in the /usr/local tree.
As long as you have /usr/local/bin in your path, things should work.

Of course, you have to have the developer tools to do this.
There are many options to set specific details during the compilation process, but I just did a vanilla "make" and
    ./bibtool -h
gave me the typical "usage" statement.

I've never used bibtool, don't know how to use it, and don't have any test files to ensure that it works in a real-life situation.
Otherwise, I now have a seemingly-functional version of "bibtool" that runs on X86_64 Snow Leopard.
I don't guess that really helps you, but if you want it, send me a message off-list.