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

-c,--ctan
    Always use CTAN /pkg/ url instead of the package homepage

-C,--CTAN
    Use the package's CTAN path as url (e.g.: /support/ctanbib)

-e,--entrytype
    (default manual) Change entry type

-h,--help
    print the help message.

-p,--pkgname
    Wrap the package name in a \ctanbibpkgname command. This command can be redefined in the document for the desired formatting.

-v,--version
    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.