Collapse the modules' bibliographies into one

A project manual cites references that live in each module's own citations/references_<module>.bib. bookdown wants a single bibliography, so these are merged, together with any further files the manual supplies – typically an auto-generated one for the R packages in use, and the manual's own references.

Usage

collapseModuleBibs(
  modulePath = "modules",
  extraBibs = character(0),
  outFile = file.path("citations", "references.bib")
)

Arguments

modulePath

directory holding the module directories, searched recursively for references_*.bib.

extraBibs

further .bib files to merge in, in the order given. Files that do not exist are ignored, so a manual can list one that is only generated on some builds.

outFile

path to write the merged bibliography to. Its directory is created if needed.

Value

outFile, invisibly.

Details

Files with no entries are skipped. A module that cites nothing yet reasonably ships a comments-only .bib, and RefManageR::ReadBib() fails on such a file with arguments imply differing number of rows: 0, 1, which would otherwise take a whole manual down over one placeholder.

outFile may also appear in extraBibs: every input is read before anything is written, so a manual can accumulate into its own bibliography as before.