Background
Tectonic vendors bibtex and makeindex internally — they're not
separate binaries the user can swap. For 99% of users this is fine.
Advanced users with bibliographies that demand a specific bibtex
variant (e.g. bibtex8 for non-Latin scripts) or a non-default
makeindex (e.g. xindy for multilingual indexing) currently have
no way to override. Biber is already exposed as a toolchain attr
(see §4.9 / latex_toolchain.biber), which proves the pattern works.
What this would look like
Optional bibtex and makeindex fields on the latex_toolchain
rule, defaulting to None. When set, they'd be staged onto PATH in
the action, same wiring as biber. When None, Tectonic's vendored
copies are used (current behaviour).
Why deferred
No real user demand reported. Worth adding when someone hits the
limitation, since the implementation pattern is already established
by the biber attr.
Source: DESIGN.md §5.2.
Background
Tectonic vendors
bibtexandmakeindexinternally — they're notseparate binaries the user can swap. For 99% of users this is fine.
Advanced users with bibliographies that demand a specific bibtex
variant (e.g.
bibtex8for non-Latin scripts) or a non-defaultmakeindex(e.g.xindyfor multilingual indexing) currently haveno way to override. Biber is already exposed as a toolchain attr
(see §4.9 /
latex_toolchain.biber), which proves the pattern works.What this would look like
Optional
bibtexandmakeindexfields on thelatex_toolchainrule, defaulting to None. When set, they'd be staged onto PATH in
the action, same wiring as biber. When None, Tectonic's vendored
copies are used (current behaviour).
Why deferred
No real user demand reported. Worth adding when someone hits the
limitation, since the implementation pattern is already established
by the biber attr.
Source: DESIGN.md §5.2.