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CTANBIB(1) ctanbib man page CTANBIB(1)

NAME

ctanbib - retrieve bibliographic information for packages hosted on CTAN

SYNOPSIS

ctanbib [options] package-name ...

DESCRIPTION

This command can retrieve bibliographic information for TeX packages hosted on CTAN in the BibTeX format.

Look up the Catalogue entry for each package-name on CTAN (at https://ctan.org/xml/2.0/pkg/package-name), and convert relevant information to a BibTeX entry.

By default, the url field in the output entry is the package's home field value if that is specified in the Catalogue entry; if it isn't, or if the --ctan option is given, https://ctan.org/pkg/package-name is used. Or, if the --CTAN option is given, the url field is the package's directory on CTAN (e.g., /macros/latex/contrib/hyperref).

OPTIONS

Always use CTAN /pkg/ url instead of the package homepage
Use the package's CTAN path as url (e.g.: /support/ctanbib)
(default manual) Change entry type
print the help message.
Wrap the package name in a \ctanbibpkgname command. This command can be redefined in the document for the desired formatting.
print the version info.

EXAMPLES

ctanbib latex

This minimal invocation will print data using conventional BibLaTeX fields to standard output:

@manual{latex,


  title = {The latex package},


  subtitle = {A TeX macro package that defines LaTeX},


  author = {Lamport, Leslie and {The LaTeX Project Team}},


  url = {http://www.latex-project.org/},


  urldate = {2026-05-18}, 


  date = {2025-11-01},


  version = {},
}

Note that the output does not use TeX control sequences or have completely correct capitalization. ctanbib works only from the (plain text) data available from CTAN; any typesetting niceties are up to you.

With the --entrytype option:

ctanbib -e ctan hyperref

This produces a bib record with the @ctan type:

@ctan{hyperref,


  title = {The hyperref package},


  subtitle = {Extensive support for hypertext in LaTeX},


  author = {Oberdiek, Heiko and Rahtz, Sebastian


    and {Oberdiek Package Support Group}


    and {The LaTeX Project Team}},


  url = {https://github.com/latex3/hyperref},


  urldate = {2026-05-18}, 


  date = {2026-04-24},


  version = {7.01q},
}

SEE ALSO

See ctanbib-doc.pdf (run: texdoc ctanbib) for more details.

AUTHOR

Michal Hoftich
https://github.com/michal-h21/ctanbib

LICENSE

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this software under the terms of the LaTeX Project Public License, either version 1.3 of this license or (at your option) any later version.

2026-05-26 0.2e