[tex-live] Bug#561500: Metapost: segmentation fault while text is included with btex etex

[Norbert Preining]

Hi Taco, hi all,

at the Debian side we got the following bug report, but it seems
that it applies to TeX Live upstream as well since the texmf.cnf
variable is present there, too:

On Thu, 17 Dec 2009, Jean-Paul Vincent wrote:
> A metapost file with: *btex etex*, inside do not compile. No problem 
> without btex-etex.
> 
> I found that the error is coming from the following line of texmf.cnf:
> 
> ----------------------------
> % Used by makempx to run TeX.  We use "etex" because MetaPost is
> % expecting DVI, and not "tex" because we want first line parsing.
> TEX = etex
> ----------------------------
> 
> because etex is gone. The command:
> export TEX=latex && mpost logistic.mp
> compile the file logistic.mp 
> (I got a font error from gv: undefined in /cmr10).
> 
> 
> Description of the problem:
> (I copied a file logistic from the Metapost manual)
> 
> ----------------------------
> ~% mpost logistic.mp
> This is MetaPost, version 1.208 (kpathsea version 5.0.0)
> (./logistic.mp
> fatal: exec failed: No such file or directory
> fatal: Command failed: etex --parse-first-line
> --interaction=nonstopmode mp691666.tex; see mpxerr.log
> zsh: segmentation fault  mpost logistic.mp
> ---------------------------
> 
> And gdb said:
> 
> --------------
> ~% gdb mpost
> (gdb) run td/logistic.mp mpost
> Starting program: /usr/bin/mpost logistic.mp mpost
> This is MetaPost, version 1.208 (kpathsea version 5.0.0)
> (logistic.mpfatal: exec failed: No such file or directoryfatal: Command
> failed: etex --parse-first-line --interaction=nonstopmode mp692886.tex;
> see mpxerr.log
> Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
> 0x00007ffff7637451 in vfprintf () from /lib/libc.so.6
> --------------

I think there are two bugs:
- first the TEX seting in texmf.cnf should be changed, Taco, what is
  the one that is preferred/needed?
- mpost should not segfault on a missing etex

If you have some suggestions or patches for me to test please
let me know.

Best wishes

Norbert

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Norbert Preining                preining@{jaist.ac.jp, logic.at, debian.org}
JAIST, Japan               TU Wien, Austria            Debian TeX Task Force
gpg DSA: 0x09C5B094   fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76  A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094
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