Bibliography link not being detected?

[joshbarrass]

I have a bibliography link like so at the bottom of my document:

bibliography:references.bib
bibliographystyle:ieeetr

However, when I use C-] to insert a link, there are no references displayed in the list. If I put

#+BIBLIOGRAPHY: ./references.bib

at the top of the document and use helm-bibtex-with-local-bibliography, the references are detected with no problem. In addition, I can work around the problem by adding

# -*- bibtex-completion-bibliography: ("./references.bib"); -*-

to the top of the file, and then C-] detects my references as expected. It is just when I rely solely on the bibliography link at the bottom of my document that it doesn't work.

This is only something I've noticed recently; I've had org-ref working just like this in the past. In addition, helm-bibtex works fine in LaTeX mode, it's just in org-mode that it breaks.

Any ideas on how I could fix this?

EDIT: ~~Additionally, I have just noticed that this also causes the LaTeX exporter not to work, so even this is not detecting the bibliography link.~~ This was just because I hadn't set up my config properly. If I ensure bibtex is called in the LaTeX export command, the references are added to the document correctly.

[jkitchin]

hm. is the link active, i.e. is it blue, and can you click on the bibliography link to open it and there is a tooltip on it?

[joshbarrass]

Yes, the link is blue, clicking it opens the file and hovering over it says either "Bibliography link" or "File exists at references.bib", dependent on where I hover.

[joshbarrass]

I've just discovered that it seems to detect it fine without setting bibtex-completion-bibliography if I use org-ref-insert-cite-link rather than helm-bibtex; I can start typing the name of a reference and it autocompletes quite happily. It seems to just be helm-bibtex that isn't working. So perhaps more an issue on their end than with org-ref.

[jkitchin]

I see. if you have just updated from org-ref 2 to org-ref-3, there is probably some reconfiguration to do.

I think you need:

(require 'org-ref)
(require 'org-ref-helm)

The helm command is org-ref-cite-insert-helm, which I guess you need to put into

(setq org-ref-insert-cite-function 'org-ref-cite-insert-helm). Then I think the key binding should use helm.

[joshbarrass]

I should already have these things in my config, The full configuration in my init.el is

(use-package org-ref
  :ensure t
  :config
  (require 'org-ref)
  (require 'org-ref-helm)
  (define-key org-mode-map (kbd "C-c ]") 'org-ref-insert-link)
  (setq org-ref-insert-link-function 'org-ref-insert-link-hydra/body
        org-ref-insert-cite-function 'org-ref-cite-insert-helm
        org-ref-insert-label-function 'org-ref-insert-label-link
        org-ref-insert-ref-function 'org-ref-insert-ref-link
        org-ref-cite-onclick-function (lambda (_) (org-ref-citation-hydra/body)))
  (message "org-ref is installed")
  )

[jkitchin]

I don't know what the issue is then. With that setup, C-c ] should insert a link from your bibliography. It should look like it comes from helm-bibtex, but I think it doesn't actually come from helm-bibtex. You can't do that directly from helm-bibtex I think.

It maybe used to be that way, I think in v2 I directly monkey-patched helm-bibtex actions to do this, but in v3, that is not the case I think.