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Since today (or yesterday) one of my packages [paresse.sty] is giving an error.

I've tracked down the origin to skeyval which says

~/texlive/2020/texmf-dist/tex/latex/skeyval/skeyval-core.tex:8460: 
Package skeyval Error: Patching '\end' failed! (skeyval)
'\skvAtEndEnvironment' will not work

I've got the impression that skeyval tries to do some almost legal moves there and that a recent change in the LaTeX2e kernel has put some hindrance in its expectations.

As far as I understand what I read, it seems to me that firstaid.sty could come at the rescue for a quick fix (until I rewrite my style file without skeyval), but I am at my wit's end there.

Any help for a quick fix will be highly appreciated.

epR8GaYuh
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kitanokuma
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  • Welcome to TeX.SX! skeyval is tricky to fix, even in firstaid; you'd have to revert to the previous definition of \begin, \end, and \document (it seems) to satisfy skeyval, load the package, then apply the correct patches manually later... I'd say it's easier to just pick another keyval package... – Phelype Oleinik Oct 03 '20 at 09:20
  • Side remark: as you are a package author: please test your packages also regularly with latex-dev. https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/506646/what-is-latex-dev. We are providing this format just for such cases so that packages do not get catched by surprised by the side-effects of a latex update. – Ulrike Fischer Oct 03 '20 at 09:56
  • You might also want to switch from ifluatex and ifxetex to the iftex package. For your toggles you could switch to etoolboxes toggles (so that you could replace the \iftogon with \iftoggle and \iftogoff with \nottoggle by search&replace), and setup your complementary keys with xkeyval directly (with \settoggle or \toggletrue and \togglefalse). The changes necessary should be minimal this way. – Skillmon Oct 03 '20 at 10:15
  • Is your file hosted anywhere on the internet (e.g., Github)? This way I could take a look at your sources and send you the necessary changes. – Skillmon Oct 03 '20 at 14:03

1 Answers1

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skeyval, catoptions and the other packages from this author patches a number of core latex commands. With the new latex and the new hook management and the changes this involves they fail in various places (the author has been notified some time ago about this).

The firstaid package will not help here: the number of packages and commands to correct to allow them to work again is too large, finding the right correction is rather complicated and whatever one do will perhaps break the hook management for other packages.

I advise to drop skeyval (and the other packages) and use a keyval interface which doesn't intrude so much in latex internals.

Side remark: Please test your packages also regularly with latex-dev. What is "latex-dev"?. We are providing this format just for such cases so that packages do not get catched by surprise by the side-effects of a latex update. We try to track down packages which are affected directly by changes and notify the authors, but it is not really possible to check every dependant package too. So we need the help of package authors here.

Ulrike Fischer
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