citeproc not generating bibliography when declared as part of the YAML metadata

[GarciaBarreiro]

Explain the problem.

Adding citeproc: true to the YAML metadata of a MarkDown file does not generate a bibliography after executing pandoc file.md -o file.pdf, but executing pandoc file.md -o file.pdf --citeproc does and, as far as I know, the first option should also work.

Pandoc version?

I managed to reproduce this issue in the latest Pandoc version (3.1.8).

Example

Using pandoc file.md -o file.pdf on the simple test below just generates a PDF that says test [@ id123], but adding the --citeproc option adds the bibliography.

---
references:
  - id: id123
    title: Some Title
    author: Some Guy
citeproc: true
---

test [@id123]

[jgm]

Not a bug. --citeproc is a command line option, not something you can trigger via metadata.
You can, however, use a defaults file (see the manual).

[iandol]

@GarciaBarreiro — the ability to pass command-line flags as part of the YAML metadata has been a long-standing wish for some of us: #4627 which led to #5870 — defaults files currently still require a separate file and explicit command-line configuration, which #5870 may address…