[tex-live] bug report of bibtex

[John Collins]

Hi Karl,

On 6/10/18 6:25 PM, Karl Berry wrote:
> Hi John,
> 
>          bibtex output/main.aux
> 
>      Then the search for subsidiary .aux files is changed from no path to
>      just the path component of the top-level aux file.
> 
> I just committed a change that attempts to implement this (edited patch
> below for the record, r47979). Hope I didn't break the world.
> 
> That is, when looking for a subsidiary aux file, it first checks the
> current directory (no change), then the dirname of the main aux file.

I've done some extensive tests, everything seems to work as intended, 
and nothing has failed.

I've also modified latexmk (for a version 4.57 to appear) to be able to 
use the new version of bibtex.  In previous versions, latexmk did an 
ugly work-around to be able to use an output-directory with bibtex.  Now 
there's a configuration variable to turn this work-around off.  (Even 
without the new version of bibtex, that also solves the problem that was 
reported by the OP of this thread.)

One thing I noticed in the code is that the second possibility tried for 
opening a subsidiary aux file involves an unconditional concatenation of 
the path component of the top-level aux file with the specified name of 
the subsidiary aux file.  Almost all of the time, that is the correct 
thing to try.  However, it could be that the subsidiary file is 
specified with an absolute path name.  That is very unusual, and of 
course the creation of such an aux file is prohibited by the default 
setting of openout_any.  Even so, it is a possible situation.  Would it 
be possible to turn of the second possibility for opening the aux file 
if its pathname is absolute?  I.e., if the path is absolute, then the 
search for the aux file relative to the output directory is not done.

John