[Tex/LaTex] How to compile LaTeX out-of-source while using bibtex

auxiliary-filesbibtexexternal filesfilesystem-accesspdftex

I often use the out-of-source compilation on my LaTeX code to separate the generated files from the source files, thus I can conveniently commit my code to the repository. The command is like this:

pdflatex -c-style-errors -include-directory=dir_of_source_files -output-directory=dir_of_generated_files -aux-directory=dir_of_aux_files main_tex_file.tex

As the options indicated, the generated files are well managed by the compiler. Recently, I turn to bibtex to manage my bibliography instead of typing the bibitems directly in a tex file. And I would like to use the workflow as above – to put the generated file into another directory. As a result, I failed. This is the test snippet:

\documentclass{book}
\begin{document}
The device \cite{Vikas01} is special \cite{Bernard03}.
\bibliographystyle{ieeetr}
\bibliography{refs}
\end{document}

The content of the bib file is:

@BOOK{Bernard03,
  AUTHOR={Bernard Desgraupes},
  TITLE={{\LaTeX}, {A}pprentissage, guide et r{\'e}f{\'e}rence},
  PUBLISHER={Vuibert},
  YEAR={2003},
  address={Paris},
  edition={second},
  month={mar}}

@INPROCEEDINGS{Vikas01,
  AUTHOR={Kawadia, Vikas},
  TITLE={Protocols for Media Access Control and Power Control in Wireless Networks},
  BOOKTITLE={40th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control},
  YEAR={2001},
  month={mar}}

And my compilation commands are:

pdflatex -c-style-errors -include-directory=dir_of_source_files -output-directory=dir_of_generated_files -aux-directory=dir_of_aux_files main_tex_file.tex
bibtex -include-directory=dir_of_aux_files main_tex_file

Then the prompt comes out:

I couldn't open file name 'refs.aux'

And there is also a suspicious warning in the log file:

LaTeX Warning: Citation `Vikas01' on page 1 undefined on input line 5.

LaTeX Warning: Citation `Bernard03' on page 1 undefined on input line 5.

No file testbib.bbl.
[1
] (d:\tex\bin\testbib-shadow\au\testbib.aux)

LaTeX Warning: There were undefined references.
)

I guess that the compiler failed to generate the .bbl file. How to fix this problem?

Best Answer

bibtex does not have a -include-directory switch, so it has to see the .aux file of your document in the directory where it is invoked.

Therefore, 

bibtex dir_of_aux_files/main_tex_file

should be used, where main_tex_file is of course without the .tex at the end.

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