Configure kile and biblatex

Question

How do people configure kile to work with biblatex? I have two bibliographies

\begin{refsection}
...
\end{refsection}

\begin{refsection}
...
\end{refsection}

and to get this to compile I need to run at least

pdflatex file

bibtex file1-blx

bibtex file2-blx

pdflatex file

Can this be made automatic in kile?

(I am on ubuntu.)

EDIT: Herbert gives a method using biber which works. However it is a pain to get the latest biber and biblatex in ubuntu as I mention in the comments. However, his method also suggests that a similar custom build option for kile could be made to work for biblatex+bibtex too which would enable you to keep the ubuntu version of texlive.

Consider to switch from BibTeX to biber -- with biber, subdivided bibliographies should be processed in a single pass. — lockstep, Jun 09 '11 at 16:18
Is it obvious how to do that in kile? The normal pdflatex build option in kile just runs "pdflatex -interaction=nonstopmode %source" and there is a tick box on the same page for "Automatically run additional tools" but I don't know how to configure what that does. — Simd, Jun 09 '11 at 16:28
New Kile and new texlive/biblatex both uses logreq. Kile will recompile as necessary automatically. No extra tools necessary. — Mikael Öhman, Jun 10 '11 at 17:19
@Raphael The installation of the latest TeX Live version is not too complicated. Please follow this short tutorial and you certainly will be successful as I have been. — JJD, Sep 02 '12 at 01:28
The standard question for this kind of stuff is now Biblatex with Biber: Configuring my editor to avoid undefined citations. There is also a Kile answer over there. — moewe, Apr 18 '17 at 12:42

score 19 · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-01T13:23:10.097

19

Go to Settings->Configure Kile
Choose on the left Build
Choose New and insert the name biber
Now click on this new item and insert on the right into the field for the command /usr/local/texlive/2010/bin/x86_64-linux/biber (this example shows my path)
Into the parameter field insert "%S"
Now enable the Quick Build item on the left and add biber in the field on the right.

Close the windows and everything should work. At the first time when running biber it takes a lot of time because it has to unpack all included files into a temporary directory. In your document do not forget to set

\usepackage[backend=biber,...]{biblatex}

With the latest version of biblatex it should be the default.

edited Jul 01 '13 at 13:23

answered Jun 09 '11 at 17:01

If I have to move to biber, how do you use it from the command line? I set \usepackage[backend=biber, arxiv=pdf, firstinits=true]{biblatex} but pdflatex file gives me Package biblatex Warning: Please (re)run Biber on the file(s): (biblatex) file2-blx.aux . But biber file2-blx gives me an error FATAL - Cannot find control file 'file2-blx.bcf'! - did you pass the "backend=biber" option to BibLaTeX? – Simd Jun 09 '11 at 18:06
I also tried biber file but get WARN - Warning: Found biblatex control file version 0.8i, expected version 1.4 FATAL - No data files on command line or provided in the file 'file.bcf'! Exiting – Simd Jun 09 '11 at 18:16
1

First delete old auxiliary files. It is safe to delete all files except the .tex one. Then run pdflatex file, then run biber file and again twice pdflatex, that is all. – Jun 09 '11 at 19:33
This doesn't work for me. Here is a sample output with a sample latex file. http://pastebin.com/yTynVz4i . I also tested it using pdflatex and bibtex and it worked fine. – Simd Jun 10 '11 at 06:15
your biblatex is completely out of date! It should be of version 1.4 but you had 0.8i. Update it – Jun 10 '11 at 06:59
1

Being on ubuntu I have now removed all installed texlive packages, installed texlive from the official website, removed kile ubuntu packages, compiled kile from source and installed. biber now works :) Kile also appears to but I notice Quickbuild is making a ps and then converting it to pdf. I would prefer it to use pdflatex if possible. – Simd Jun 10 '11 at 09:11
Go again into the configuration and edited the Quick Build in the right window. Remove "latex ->dvips ->ps2pdf" and replace it by "pdflatex-> biber->..." – Jun 10 '11 at 11:35
1

Thanks. Got it to work in the end. The secret seems to be to use '%S' with a capital S for the biber tool config. – Simd Jun 10 '11 at 12:43
The default BibTeX tool has the further settings "source extension: aux" and "target extension: bbl". Is it a good idea to copy these settings to the new biber tool, too? – Christian Aug 05 '12 at 14:41
Secondly, the default kile tool chain does some magic to call bibtex when needed but not otherwise. As far as I understand it, this happens when a tool is marked as having the class "LaTeX" (as has my custom LuaLaTeX tool for example). I do not understand how to make this magic invoke biber instead of bibtex though. – Christian Aug 05 '12 at 14:44
1

I found a slightly better but not good way: you can make biber one "configuration" for the BibTeX command. This should make kile treat biber like the regular bibtex. Unfortunately it doesn't work. My guess is that kile doesn't recognize the "Package biblatex Warning: Please (re)run Biber on the file" line because it doesn't say "please (re)run bibtex on the file". – Christian Aug 05 '12 at 16:21
@Christian: Please make this an answer! Even thought it does not work in some cases, it's very useful and since kile has an integrated terminal, you can force regeneration by running rm texfile.bbl easily. – frafl Apr 15 '13 at 17:36
@Christian: "source extension: aux" should become "source extension: bcf" (see biblatex.pdf 3.11) – frafl Apr 15 '13 at 21:21
@frafl This works although using the bcf files triggers biber and a second pdflatex run every time. Since this more than doubles the compile time if neither bibliography nor references were changed, a different solution would be better. I'll summarize this discussion into an answer after some more experimentation. – Christian Apr 16 '13 at 14:37
Can you please update your post with detailed bullet points what and how to do it, so I can get a PDF file with just one click? – user19502 Jun 30 '13 at 23:29
After, quite literally six hours of trying to figure out, I got slightly improved answer. Instead of '%S' you are supposed to type "%S". Then, in the QuickBuild add PdfLatex, biber and PDFLatex again. This generates a correct pdf file, with only an error about defernumbers, which can be fixed by adding \usepackage[backend=biber,defernumbers]{biblatex} – user19502 Jul 01 '13 at 13:21

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

EDIT: It seems like my method calls biber every time it compiles after all, so scratch this. I was pretty certain I checked that it worked like I wanted, but it seems like I was wrong. I'll leave my answer below anyway.

Since this is the top result in Google for "kile biber" and "kile biblatex", and the question doesn't have a perfect solution (@Herbert's answer seems to run biber every time I compile, which is unnecessary), I'll try and explain my solution to this problem. I'm not completely certain I understand how my solution works, but at least it seems to do what I want, which is:

Automatically run biber and rerun pdflatex when needed (when I change my bibliography or citations) when I run the tool PDFLaTeX in Kile

To make Kile work as wanted this is what I did:

First we make a new configuration for the BibTeX tool:

Go to Settings -> Configure Kile... -> Tools -> Build

Select BibTeX in the window under Select a tool

On the right side under Choose a configuration for the tool BibTeX, press the New button

Enter the name Biber

In the General tab:

in the Commmand field enter biber, in the Options field enter "%S"

In the Advanced tab

Set everything equal to the Default configuration, except the Source extension, which should be bcf

Set everything equal to the Default configuration in the Menu tab

Now just make sure that this new configuration is selected in the drop down box Choose a configuration for the tool BibTeX, and that the box Automatically run additional tools is ticked off in the configuration you use for the PDFLaTeX tool. Now the tool PDFLaTeX can be run by itself, or used in another tool like QuickBuild, and it will automatically run biber and rerun pdflatex when needed.

I'm on Linux Mint 15 (olivia) (basically Ubuntu 13.04), using Kile version 2.1.3, pdflatex version 3.1415926-2.4-1.40.13 (TeX Live 2012/Debian), and biber version 0.9.9. I think those are the versions from the default repositories, but I'm not certain.

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 01 '14 at 07:04

Go to Settings, Configure Kile. In the left panel, select Tools and Build. Press the "New..." button. Follow the next image instructions:

Biber and build settings

Now, from "Select a tool" listbox, select QuickBuild. Perform the necessary changes to have the same that the illustration:

Quickbuild settings

Press OK and compile your file/project :)

Reference: Florian Schöngaßner webpage.

score 2 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 14 '18 at 20:55

The solution is to use latexmk with Kile, i.e. in the Build menu add the new tools:

1) compile class:

name: LaTeXMk
command: latexmk
options: -pdflatex="pdflatex -synctex=1 -interaction=nonstopmode" -pdf '%source'
target extension: pdf

2) quickbuild class:

name: QuickBuild with LaTeXMk
tools: choose LaTeXMk first and then ForwarPDF
add to build menu: Quick

Then you can add QuickBuild with LaTeXMk to a toolbar and use it as a default tool - it should automatically detect engines it needs to run.

For me it works flawlessly with biber/Biblatex and SyncTeX works as well.

Of course you need to install latexmk, in Fedora with

sudo dnf install latexmk

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 10 '14 at 17:36

I wrote a simple python script (which you can find here) that calls bibtex for every .aux corresponding to some latex file. I have special reasons for not being able to use biber. So for your example,

multi-bibtex [options] file

is equivalent to

bibtex [options] file1-blx
bibtex [options] file2-blx

Now in Kile (which I don't use) you should be able to change instances of bibtex to multi-bibtex, and of course, get biblatex to use the bibtex backend.

To install on ubuntu,

git clone https://gist.github.com/9e5bb2ec0dd49a2c574b.git /tmp/mbibtex
chmod a+x /tmp/mbibtex/multi-bibtex
sudo mv /tmp/mbibtex/multi-bibtex /usr/local/bin/

Which downloads the python script and puts it in /sur/local/bin. Usual disclaimer about how you should be careful about downloading scripts and using them yadda yadda.

Luix · Answer 6 · 2018-06-14T20:47:12.900

Thanks Lukasz

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~latexmk into windows~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WSL + Kile-Windows (Windows Subsystem Linux) latexmk installed in Ubuntu or Kalilinux etc. and Kile installed in Windows, Kile command:

c:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_microsoft-windows-lxss-bash_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.17134.1_none_251beae725bc7de5\bash.exe -c "latexmk -pdf -pvc %S.tex"

Also works with TEXStudio

Into the run command .latexmkrc put:

$pdf_previewer = 'start /mnt/c/Progra~1/SumatraPDF/SUMATRAPDF.EXE';

I use sumatrapdf pdf viewer in windows.

This works as Real-Time-LaTeX , vanilla TeX Live and compile LaTeX code in real-time. Have fun ;)

path to bash.exe in windows change dependent of your Windows10 Version 'c:\windows\ dir /s bash.exe' — Luix, Jun 14 '18 at 20:32

Configure kile and biblatex

6 Answers6

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