Strange behavior of media9 + l3kernel in texlive-latex-recommended

[rafaeldcsantos (Rafael Santos)]

Hello,

I have one macbook pro and one macbook air, both running OS X Lion and with ports version 2.1.2. I've tried to make sure both contains the same ports installed.

I've been trying to compile a simple beamer presentation which uses media9 to allow inclusion of a mp4 file. On the macbook pro I can consistently compile and see the resulting PDF, while on the macbook air I always get the error message "media9 error: support outdated, Support package l3kernel too old".

This is very puzzling since the source file is the same (attached), OS and port versions are the same and all relevant texlive packages are installed in both machines (list attached).

I cannot say this is a bug since I can make it work in one machine but not in other. If anyone have suggestions on steps to do to get more information please let me know.

thanks Rafael

[rafaeldcsantos (Rafael Santos)]

List of texlive packages

[rafaeldcsantos (Rafael Santos)]

Source of the .tex file

[drkp (Dan Ports)]

The file compiles fine for me. Can you provide a full log of it failing?

[rafaeldcsantos (Rafael Santos)]

The file compiles fine for me. Can you provide a full log of it failing?

Here are a bunch of logs and additional information.

sdiff.txt shows the difference between the outputs of port list installed on both the Pro (everything works) and the Air (error on package l3kernel too old). I have the exact same list of packages installed in both machines. v2.tex is the input file (the same as v1.tex). v2.log is the log with the errors I've mentioned. movie.mp4 the movie I want to add.

Additional steps I did today: port selfupdate port upgrade outdated port -f clean -all all port -f uninstall inactive

Did that in both machines. Still can compile without problems on the macbook pro, but still get that strange error on the same input file on the macbook air.

thanks Rafael

[rafaeldcsantos (Rafael Santos)]

Original LaTeX source file

[rafaeldcsantos (Rafael Santos)]

Error log when compiling it on the Macbook Air

[rafaeldcsantos (Rafael Santos)]

Movie I want to add. I guess any mp4 would do.

[rafaeldcsantos (Rafael Santos)]

sdiff of installed packages -- basically shows the same packages installed in both machines

[drkp (Dan Ports)]

It looks like you have media9 installed v0.8 in /opt/local/share/texmf-local. That's a newer version than the one (0.7) included in TeX Live 2012 and apparently requires a newer l3kernel than the one TL2012 provides as well.

[rafaeldcsantos (Rafael Santos)]

Yay, it starts to make sense!

On the macbook pro (everything works) I have only a ls-R file in /opt/local/share/texmf-local. On the macbook air (error with l3kernel) I have a bunch of files which probably I installed manually and forgot about.

Last question then, how do I safely uninstall it? From media9's README file I *guess* I could just delete the directories with it and rerun texhash. Before I broke it do you have any suggestion?

thanks Rafael

[drkp (Dan Ports)]

Yes, deleting the directories and running texhash should do it. MacPorts doesn't install anything into the texmf-local directory (except the ls-R file) so, if you don't have any other packages installed there, it should be safe to remove everything in texmf-local.

[rafaeldcsantos (Rafael Santos)]

Aaaaand everything works!

Resumed description of the problem and solution (for future google searches): Got a "media9 error: support outdated, Support package l3kernel too old" error message in a Macbook Air. The reason is that I had two versions of media9 installed: 0.7 which was included in TeX Live 2012 and 0.8 which I've installed manually. I've manually removed the packages from /opt/local/share/texmf-local and rerun texhash, now everything works OK.

thanks to all Rafael