latin.xdy is built incorrectly (causing crash)

[Nelson Lago]

When building the xindy-rules package, the file "make-rules/inputenc/Makefile.in" uses grep to remove comment lines from latin?.xdy files and concatenate them into latin.xdy. This fails because gnu grep recognizes some of the files as binary and, instead of outputting the expected lines, simply writes out "Binary file (standard input) matches", which is obviously invalid. Therefore, trying to use xindy with a simple LaTeX document results in

---
texindy testfile.idx
Opening logfile "/dev/null" (done)
Reading indexstyle...
Loading module "/tmp/F5cxozedk0"...
Loading module "lang/general/latin9-lang.xdy"...
Loading module "lang/general/latin9.xdy"...
Finished loading module "lang/general/latin9.xdy".
Finished loading module "lang/general/latin9-lang.xdy".
Loading module "tex/inputenc/latin.xdy"...

Error in line 4:
;; Generated from latin?.xdy

Binary
ERROR: EVAL: variable BINARY has no value
---

A good solution was added to gentoo (https://bugs.gentoo.org/573794 ). I suggest ubuntu (and debian) incorporate this patch.

[Nelson Lago (lago)]

For those struggling with this issue, a workaround is to call "texindy -C utf8" or, if using imakeidx, using "\makeindex[options=-C utf8]" (obviously, as long as your document is indeed utf8). Using XeLaTex/LuaLaTeX also works, because both also force utf8.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.