tufte-book + biblatex error: biblatex incompatible with natbib?

Question

I would like to compile a thesis with the tufte-book class. Is tufte-book supposed to be compatible with biblatex? This question suggests that it's possible? Maybe something changed since?

Here's a MWE:

\documentclass{tufte-book}
\usepackage[style=verbose, autocite=footnote, backend=biber]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{../references.bib}

\begin{document}

Hello World.

\end{document}

The error is:

! Package biblatex Error: Incompatible package 'natbib'.

See the biblatex package documentation for explanation.
Type  H <return>  for immediate help.
 ...

l.202 \blx@packageincompatibility

?

I tried using both Tectonic and pdflatex which the authors of tufte-book recommend in their README. This GitHub issue of tufte-latex suggests that they wish to switch to biblatex from natbib?

Answer 1

The tufte-latex classes load natbib by default and natbib is completely incompatible with biblatex (because natbib is based on the classical BibTeX and core-LaTeX approach to citations and bibliographies while biblatex completely reimplements citation and bibliography handling).

If you load tufte-book with the option nobib, it will not load natbib and you can use biblatex. (Note that both the question and answer in Can I use biblatex with Tufte classes? use the nobib option, but don't discuss its relevance explicitly.)

\documentclass[nobib]{tufte-book}
\usepackage[style=verbose, autocite=footnote, backend=biber]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\begin{document}
Hello World.\autocite{sigfridsson}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

Note that with biblatex you need to compile your document with Biber and not with BibTeX (Biblatex with Biber: Configuring my editor to avoid undefined citations might be helpful).