tikz externalize error

Question

I've run into a compilation error for the externalized option with tikz. Up to a couple months ago it all worked fine. Now I am getting this error

! Package tikz Error: Sorry, the system call 'pdflatex -enable-write18 -halt-on
-error -interaction=batchmode -jobname "tikz/Master-figure0" "\def\tikzexternal
realjob{Master}\input{Master}"' did NOT result in a usable output file 'tikz/Ma
ster-figure0' (expected one of .pdf:.jpg:.jpeg:.png:). Please verify that you h
ave enabled system calls. For pdflatex, this is 'pdflatex -shell-escape'. Somet
imes it is also named 'write 18' or something like that. Or maybe the command s
imply failed? Error messages can be found in 'tikz/Master-figure0.log'. If you
continue now, I'll try to typeset the picture.

These lines appear to be the culprit. If I run the whole thing without externalizing, it works fine.

\usepgfplotslibrary{external}
\tikzexternalize[prefix=tikz/,shell escape=-enable-write18]

Interestingly, the plots are still generated like they are supposed to and appear in the output pdf. But there is no separate pdf output for the single plots like usual for the externalize option.

Here is a snipped from the log file

This is pdfTeX, Version 3.141592653-2.6-1.40.24 (MiKTeX 22.1) (preloaded format=pdflatex 2022.3.12)  19 OCT 2022 00:15
entering extended mode
 \write18 enabled.
 %&-line parsing enabled.
 .
 .
 .
! Undefined control sequence.
<argument>  \visibility 
                        {cite} \keypart { \namepart [use=true]{prefix} \name...
l.262 }

It appears that the \visibility{cite} is the faulty part, even though the figure does not contain any kind of citation or biblatex interaction. I had the same error couple weeks back compiling the main file. Solution here was easy, just update all packages. The old miktex wasn't compatible with my newer biblatex. Just updating does not solve anything here though. These are my biblatex settings if it is relevant:

\usepackage[backend=biber, style=apa, natbib=true]{biblatex}

Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

The problem was the not correctly set up path to my portable version. Adding the correct path to \tikzset{external/system call="myPath/pdflatex.exe"} solved it