problem(s) with extractbb and extractbb.lua recently introduced

[Frank Mittelbach]

Hi Max

>> So it looks as if there is one or more packaging issues (or some coding
>> issue in the lua file from Max in the case of MacOS) that were
>> introduced fairly recently, i.e, when extractbb.lua got added.

> Yeah, this is probably my fault, although I'm not exactly sure what's
> going wrong. For the wrapper command to run correctly, it needs to be
> located either in the same directory as the LuaTeX binary or somewhere
> in the scripts tree. What do you get when you run the below?
> 
>      $ dirname $(type -p luatex)
>      $ dirname $(type -p extractbb)

both give   /Library/TeX/texbin
> 
>      $ kpsewhich --format=texmfscripts extractbb.lua
>      $ realpath $(type -p extractbb)

both give

/usr/local/texlive/2024/texmf-dist/scripts/texlive/extractbb.lua

> 
> If either the first two commands OR the last two commands give identical
> output, then the script should run properly; if both pairs give
> different output, then the script will refuse to run with the error
> message that you're seeing.

well, maybe it should but it doesn't :-)

> I assumed that all Unixes would behave the same way, so we only tested
> with Linux and Windows before deploying the new script. macOS seems to
> be different than Linux here, so once I figure out_how_  it's different,
> I should be able to adjust the script fairly easily.

I think it is a packaging error, as Herbert pointed out. extractbb is 
not a binary (which I think it is supposed to be) but instead I have

lrwxrwxrwx@ 1 root  wheel  46 Jul  1 00:21 /Library/TeX/texbin/extractbb 
-> ../../texmf-dist/scripts/texlive/extractbb.lua

That might be due to the way MacTeX sets up the distribution

When I switch back to the 2023 setup, the dir also contains a single 
link, but that looks more like the way the rest of MacTeX is set up. 
There I have

going back to 2023 installation I get

lrwxrwxrwx@ 1 root  wheel  9 Feb 25  2021 /Library/TeX/texbin/extractbb 
-> xdvipdfmx

hope that helps

frank