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I am using TexMaker in High Sierra MacOS with mactex and TexLive installed and apparently updated. When I try to compile, I have the message that the versions of Biblatex (3.10) and Biber (2.7) are not compatible (I need Biber 2.10 according to the compatibility matrix).

I have tried updating Biber but it seems imposible since TexLive says that my Biber version is the last one and also that self updates are not available. I tried downloading Biber 2.10 from the sourceforge.net page but I can't install it manually. Yesterday I past all the day with this problem at in the end I decided to erase all the packages, reinstall mactex, texlive and all the packages and the error message is still there.

I know this subject seems replicate (and maybe it is) but I think I read all the concerning questions and answers and either they are not referring to same problem or I am not able to apply them to my problem.

I am sorry if this question is already answered and it's just me that can't solve to with the tools that I already have, but I would appreciate any help you could give.

This is the error message:

INFO - This is Biber 2.7 INFO - Logfile is 'main.blg' INFO - Reading 'main.bcf' ERROR - Error: Found biblatex control file version 3.4, expected version 3.3. This means that your biber (2.7) and biblatex (3.10) versions are incompatible. See compat matrix in biblatex or biber PDF documentation. INFO - ERRORS: 1

and the code is:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[style=numeric,sorting=nyt,sortcites=true,autopunct=true,
autolang=hyphen,bibencoding=utf8,hyperref=true,abbreviate=false,
backref=true,backend=biber]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{bibliography.bib}

\begin{document}

[Here goes the text that I am ignoring right now]

\printbibliography
\end{document}

I would like to solve it without downgrading the bib latex version if posible.

Thank you very much in advance.

Stefan Pinnow
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Carmen
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  • When you say 'mactex and TexLive installed', do you mean that you have two TeX systems installed? In that case versions conflicts are quite likely. Make sure you have only one TeX distribution installed and that that one is up to date. – moewe Jan 25 '18 at 09:12
  • What do you get if you type which -a biber/type -a biber in the command line? Do you get several lines of output? What do you get from kpsewhich -a biblatex.sty? – moewe Jan 25 '18 at 09:28
  • @moewe I have: /Library/TeX/texbin/biber for which -a biber; biber is /Library/TeX/texbin/biber for type -a biber and nothing for the last line kpsewhich -a biblatex.sty – Carmen Jan 25 '18 at 10:20
  • OK, so there seems to be only one Biber. What does biber --version give? – moewe Jan 25 '18 at 10:24
  • I am doing something wrong for sure, this is what I get: -bash: /opt/local/bin/biber: No such file or directory – Carmen Jan 25 '18 at 10:27
  • Mhhh, I thought Biber was in /Library/TeX/texbin/biber? Unfortunately, I don't have a Mac and can't test what these commands should give. – moewe Jan 25 '18 at 10:35
  • Try using TeX Live Utility to update biber to version 2.10. – Bernard Jan 25 '18 at 10:56
  • I already used it and it says that there is nothing to update, and tex live utility seems to be updated because when I run the tlmgr update --self it says it's already updated. Does this information help? – Carmen Jan 25 '18 at 11:10
  • Can you simply search your entire PC for files named biber? Is there more than one such file? Where are those files located? – moewe Jan 25 '18 at 16:09
  • I found a lot of results for files containing biber but I think the most relevant ones are: an exec in the route /opt/local/libexec/perl5.24; a folder called biblatex-biber-2.7_2 in the route /opt/local/var/macports/registry/portfiles; a folder called biblatex-biber in the route /opt/local/var/macports/software. – Carmen Jan 25 '18 at 16:26
  • And all of them are called biber only? What do the folders contain? Shouldn't there also be an exec in /Library/TeX/texbin/? – moewe Jan 25 '18 at 16:32
  • Yes, actually there is an exec in this route, I don't know why it wasn't show when I looked for all the files named biber. Also in the folder located in the route /opt/local/var/macports/software/biblatex-biber there is only a file:biblatex-biber-2.7_2+perl5_24.darwin_17.noarch.tbz2 – Carmen Jan 25 '18 at 16:56
  • Can you execute the Biber in /opt/local/libexec/perl5.24 and the one from /Library/TeX/texbin/biber and ask them for their versions with biber --version? What do they say? – moewe Jan 25 '18 at 16:57
  • Have you installed TeX with both MacPorts and MacTeX? See https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/97183/35864. You only need one installation. – moewe Jan 25 '18 at 17:02
  • I am probably doing it wrong but I go to the folders in which the biber exec are and I type biber --version on the terminal and it says that he version is 2.10. I am really confused. Also I don't know how to know if I installed Tex through MacPorts or MacTex because it was long ago. I could erase everything and reinstall with one of them. – Carmen Jan 25 '18 at 17:24
  • The path was the one/opt/local/libexec/perl5.24 I changed the path for the TexMaker preferences to the one /Library/TeX/texbin/biber and now the error that appears is the following INFO- This is Biber 2.10 INFO - Logfile os 'main.blg' INFO - Reading 'main.bfc' INFO - Found 3 cite keys in bib section 0 INFO - Looking for Bibtex format file 'bibliography.bib' for section 0 ERROR -Data file 'bibliography.bib' cannot be read in encoding 'UTF-8': Can't decode ill-formed UTF-8 octet sequence <F1> etc. (I had to copy this manually because I couldn't copy paste it. – Carmen Jan 25 '18 at 17:40
  • Aha! It works now. You now need to check if your .bib file contains characters that are not valid UTF-8. Can you check its encoding settings? You can use file -I bibliography.bib (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/539294/how-do-i-determine-file-encoding-in-osx) See https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/402714/35864 – moewe Jan 25 '18 at 17:44
  • Yes, the encoding for the bibliography wasn't UTF-8, it's ISO-88859-1: bibliography.bib: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 (I tried removing the bibencoding=utf8 from the heading of the document but doesn't solve anything) – Carmen Jan 25 '18 at 17:51
  • You probably need bibencoding=latin1. – moewe Jan 25 '18 at 17:53
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    Oh My God thank you soooo much. I don't know how to give you the positive review. It was a painful job the one that you did, I am really grateful that it worked. I think I am going to uninstall Tex with MacPorts to avoid duplicities something similar (wahtever you recommend). Thank you a million times – Carmen Jan 25 '18 at 17:56

1 Answers1

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Open "MikTex Package Manager" and the "MikTex Package Manager (Admin)": Update in both the BibLatex and Biber Packages

Open "MiKTex Options" and "MiKTex Options (Admin): "Refresh FNDB" and "Update Formats" in both

Try to compile again. It should work now.

Andy Guan
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    If there is one thing we can say does not help it is running MikTeX's update manager. The OP uses Mac OS X and states " mactex and TexLive installed". While MikTeX is experimentally available on Mac (see https://miktex.org/howto/install-miktex-mac) I don't think a lot of people use it already. – moewe Jan 25 '18 at 16:07
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    Using the Tex Live utility I reinstalled both biber and biblatex but the problem still remains. Thank you anyways. – Carmen Jan 25 '18 at 16:17
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    I'am facing same problem both in MikTeX and TL: ERROR - Error: Found biblatex control file version 3.3, expected version 3.4. This means that your biber (2.10) and biblatex (3.7) versions are incompatible. – Igor Kotelnikov Feb 07 '18 at 07:12