Bug#870099: latexdiff: Since some Perl update, latexdiff doesnt't even start

[Emmanuel Charpentier]

Package: latexdiff
Version: 1.1.1-2
Severity: grave
Justification: renders package unusable

Dear Maintainer,

*** Reporter, please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***

   * What led up to the situation?

Trying to use latexdiff-git, I got :
$ latexdiff-git -r HEAD~1 Spectro1.tex
Unescaped left brace in regex is illegal here in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/\\zref\@newlabel{ <-- HERE DIFchgb(\d*)}{.*\\abspage{(\d*)}}/ at
/usr/bin/latexdiff-git line 451.

It turns out that I get the same error for *any* invocation of latexdiff :

$ latexdiff --help
Unescaped left brace in regex is illegal here in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/\\includeonly{ <-- HERE (.*?)}/ at /usr/bin/latexdiff line 1572.


   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or ineffective)?

Nothing : I can't think of any workaround...

A bit of googling leads to https://github.com/ftilmann/latexdiff/issues/43,
which hints that this bug is fixed in an upstream release not yet in Debian.

This issue also hints at a possible Perl-ish origin of the problem : indeed,
the issue appeared wit perl-5.22.1 and my current perl is :

$ perl --version

This is perl 5, version 26, subversion 0 (v5.26.0) built for x86_64-linux-gnu-
thread-multi
(with 51 registered patches, see perl -V for more detail)




-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (650, 'testing'), (60, 'unstable'), (50, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.11.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.utf8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=fr_FR.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages latexdiff depends on:
ii  perl  5.26.0-4

Versions of packages latexdiff recommends:
ii  texlive-generic-recommended  2017.20170629-1
ii  texlive-latex-base           2017.20170629-1
ii  texlive-latex-extra          2017.20170629-1

Versions of packages latexdiff suggests:
ii  git         1:2.13.2-3
ii  subversion  1.9.6-1+b2

-- no debconf information