Update of biber missing

[Bruno Voisin]

Herbert Voss wrote

> That is not the problem! The problem is why I have with macTeX
> a correct setting:
> 
> iMac:Intro4 voss$ tlmgr platform list
> tlmgr: package repository 
> 
> ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/tex/CTAN/systems/texlive/tlnet
>  (verified)
> Available platforms:
> [...]
> (i) universal-darwin
> [...]
> 
> but on another machine (also BiGSur) with the installation of texlive not??
> There is no (i) in the output. I'll try to reinstall TeXLive and see 
> what happens.

I'll stop here because I am not sure I am actually helping.

But regarding just the above: my impression is that you installed first with install-tl at a time (ie 2020 or before) when the platform name on the Mac was x86_64-darwin. Then, I don't know how exactly that happened, you end up now having support files for TeX Live 2021 in /usr/local/texlive/2021, but binaries in /usr/local/texlive/bin/x86_64-darwin using a platform name that ceased to exist in 2021, when the name switched from x86_64-darwin to universal-darwin.

I strongly suspect the 2021 binaries were never installed, and you have been using the 2020 binaries all along.

That's also why there is no (i) in the output on your second machine: the platform name on it, x86_64-darwin, is no longer within the list of available platform names.

Hopefully using "tlmgr platform add universal-darwin" would set things back on track, by adding the 2021 binaries with a platform name that TeX Live knows about. Reinstall TeX Live from scratch is another solution.

Of course, I may be wrong and the problem may be entirely different.

Bruno