Bug#677202: biber packages version 0.9.9+git2012426-3 is beta and requires beta version of biblatex

[Miguel Telleria de Esteban]

Package: biber
Version: 0.9.9+git2012426-3
Severity: grave
Justification: renders package unusable

Dear all,

Overview
--------

With the current Sid situation (even close to release) we have a
conflict between the versions of biber and biblatex.  Both come from
the same upstream author but are handled by different Debian Teams and
maintainers (Perl and Tex teams respectively).

Fortunately, the situation is easy to fix by either downgrading biber
package version (to the latest official 0.9.9 version) or upgrading
biblatex to the 2.0 beta version.  I have tested both scenarios and
both of them work fine.

How to reproduce the bug
------------------------

In the current Sid scenario take a latex-biber document and perform:

pdflatex <file.tex>
biber <file>
pdflatex <file.tex>

and you will obtain the following error at the 2nd latex invocation:

! Undefined control sequence.
l.22   \sortlist
  {entry}{}

(besides you also obtained warnings like this

Use of uninitialized value $llabel in concatenation (.) or string at
/usr/share/perl5/Biber.pm

    in the biber invocation).
    
    
Further evidence that this is a version conflict
------------------------------------------------

*   Using biber --version reports 1.0 (beta), and going to the
    upstream site it says that biber 1.0 version requires biblatex
    beta version as well.
    
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/biblatex-biber/files/
   
*   The \sortlist undefined control sequence is reported to be a
    symptom of this version incompatibility.
    
    http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3520829&group_id=228270&atid=1073792
    

Possible solutions
------------------

I propose two scenarios (to be discuseed with upstream author between
the Perl and Tex Debian teams):

A)  Beta versions in Sid:
    -  Package the biblatex 2.0 beta in Sid replacing the 1.7.1 version.

B)  Official versions in Sid, beta versions in experimental.

    Move this biber version 0.9.9+git2012426-3 to experimental and
    downgrade the biber Sid version to 0.9.9 from either sourceforge
    or upstream git repository using the v0.9.9 tag.
    
    Optionally package biblatex 2.0beta in experimental.
 
Regards,

     Miguel Telleria



-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=es_ES.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=es_ES.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages biber depends on:
ii  libdata-compare-perl                    1.22-0.1
ii  libdata-dump-perl                       1.21-1
ii  libdate-simple-perl                     3.03.03-1+b3
ii  libfile-slurp-unicode-perl              0.7.1-1
ii  libipc-run3-perl                        0.045-1
ii  liblist-allutils-perl                   0.03-1
ii  liblist-moreutils-perl                  0.33-1+b1
ii  liblog-log4perl-perl                    1.29-1
ii  liblwp-protocol-https-perl              6.03-1
ii  libreadonly-perl                        1.03-3
ii  libregexp-common-perl                   2011121001-1
ii  libtext-bibtex-perl                     0.63-1
ii  libunicode-collate-perl                 0.89-1
ii  libwww-perl                             6.04-1
ii  libxml-libxml-simple-perl               0.91-1
ii  libxml-libxslt-perl                     1.77-1
ii  libxml-writer-string-perl               0.1-1
ii  perl                                    5.14.2-11
ii  perl-modules [libunicode-collate-perl]  5.14.2-11

Versions of packages biber recommends:
ii  biblatex             1.7-1
ii  libreadonly-xs-perl  1.04-2+b3

biber suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information