Why does render fail for a book with an empty list of references?

[bergsmat]

Description

In RStudio, I chose File > New Project > New Directory > Quarto Book to get the default template.

Then in intro.qmd, I changed "@knuth84" to just "knuth84", with the result that the list of references is empty.

When I execute quarto render at the shell prompt in the project directory, I see

ERROR:
compilation failed- error
LaTeX Error: Something's wrong--perhaps a missing \item.

See the LaTeX manual or LaTeX Companion for explanation.
Type  H <return>  for immediate help.
 ...

l.310 \end{CSLReferences}

This looks just like the problem described in #6819, but that issue was apparently resolved over a year ago. Am I missing something obvious?

Thanks.

• Quarto 1.6.39
• IDE: RStudio 2024.12.0+467
• OS: Windows Version 10.0.19045 Build 19045

(Discussion suggested in #11772)

[mcanouil]

Because using the default bibliography method it means you are building an empty environment which LaTeX does not like here.

\begin{CSLReferences}{0}{1}
\end{CSLReferences}

(Note that it is weird to include a bibliography, ask to have a bibliography, but put nothing in it.)

Including the nocite command to include all references does work, because it adds an item in the environment (if your bibliography file actually contains something).

nocite: |
  @*

You can also change the bibliography method for LaTeX/PDF:

format:
  pdf: 
    cite-method: biblatex

See the documentation: https://quarto.org/docs/authoring/citations.html

[mcanouil]

The issue will be solved in the future when Quarto will update Pandoc to 3.5 (likely in 1.7 or 1.8)

• Document without citation doesn't get compiled jgm/pandoc#10185

[mcanouil]

Opened issue in Quarto:

• If you delete references.bib for from _quarto.yml latex rendering gives hard to understand error #11040

[bergsmat]

All good, thanks!