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Context: I've recently installed OpenBSD on my laptop instead of Linux, only to discover that biblatex and biber aren't included in the texlive_texmf-full package, or any other package as far as I can tell.

Question: What would be easier: Compile biblatex, convert my long document form calling biblatex to natbib/bibtex (I've used parencite/s and textcite/s extensively) of just giving up and installing back Linux?

Edit: Sorry biblatex was indeed included, just biber not.

spacelander
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    You don't need to compile biblatex. biblatex is just a normal TeX package. Your problem here is that Biber is not available for OpenBSD (there are FreeBSD versions - I have no clue about the BSD style systems - is there a chance that binary could work for you?). You may get away with using the Perl version directly (I have never tried that), you can get everything from https://sourceforge.net/projects/biblatex-biber/files/biblatex-biber/current/. If you don't need the Biber features you can try using only backend=bibtex. – moewe Apr 25 '18 at 13:35

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biblatex is not a problem for you. biblatex is just a normal LaTeX package and that should work independent of the system. Maybe the OpenBSD people did not want to include it because Biber is missing, maybe it is available somewhere. But you can always install a vanilla TeX live instead of the often outdated repository version of TeX live. Or (shudder) you can install the package manually.

Your real problem is Biber. Biber is biblatex's replacement for the BibTeX backend. Like BibTeX Biber is an external program (Question mark or bold citation key instead of citation number explains what the two do).

Biber is a Perl program and precompiled binaries are available for several systems via TeX live (and MikTeX), the binaries can also be downloaded from SourceForge (https://sourceforge.net/projects/biblatex-biber/files/biblatex-biber/current/binaries/).

Unfortunately, there are no binaries for OpenBSD. Instead you can download the Perl sources for Biber (https://sourceforge.net/projects/biblatex-biber/files/biblatex-biber/current/) and run Biber as Perl program directly. This should work if you have Perl 5.26 or above and can install all required modules for Biber. See also §4 of the Biber documentation.

If you can't get Biber to work on your system you can consider using backend=bibtex and running BibTeX instead of Biber. In general it is recommended to use Biber with biblatex, and not all features will work if you use BibTeX, but this could work for you as a last resort.

Depending on your document it might not be too hard to go back to natbib, but if you use the cool features of biblatex you might find that not everything can be done that easily with natbib. \parencite and \textcite are your smallest worry: Change Biblatex commands to Natbib.

Going back to Linux would eradicate the problem. But I assume you had a reason to switch to OpenBSD.

moewe
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  • Thanks! I tried to install biber from the git repo, but it says: "Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated at…" However, I changed the biblatex backend to bibtex and everything worked as expected. Guess I wasn't using any of the biber-only features. – spacelander Apr 25 '18 at 15:00
  • @spacelander Don't use the version from the repository, get the official release from https://sourceforge.net/projects/biblatex-biber/files/biblatex-biber/current/. Make sure that your Perl version is at least 5.26 and all required modules are available. I'm no perl expert, so I can't help you with error messages, unfortunately. – moewe Apr 25 '18 at 15:02
  • Oh, that means that it's the perl version then. Perl 5.24.3 is part of base (and as such not in the regular repo). – spacelander Apr 25 '18 at 15:17