150

A lot of people write makefiles that say something like

paper.pdf: paper.tex
        pdflatex paper
        bibtex paper
        pdflatex paper
        pdflatex paper

To handle re-running TeX to get new/changed references and so forth. Is there a better way to do this?

7
  • 17
    A somewhat related comment (given the current set of answers to your question): I think that any program that claims to be able to automatically discover the proper build sequence for a (La)TeX document must also be able to solve the halting problem.
    – ESultanik
    Sep 3, 2010 at 2:04
  • 2
    @ESultanik: If a finite sequence of finite length steps exists to compile the document, an algorithm to find it is pretty easy. If no finite sequence of steps exist, you're not going to be able to write an algorithm to deduce that in every case. It's possible to deal with some steps being infinite length (by having increasing length time outs).
    – TH.
    Sep 4, 2010 at 21:08
  • 5
    Should this question be CW?
    – doncherry
    Oct 14, 2011 at 15:02
  • 2
    @drozzy First three answers are still the ways to go. Which one do you have in mind for outdated ?
    – percusse
    Jul 8, 2014 at 17:53
  • @percusse Just want to see if anything new came up. Looks like arara git repo has not been updated in over a year. Jul 9, 2014 at 2:13

27 Answers 27

108

Latexmk is one possibility, although I've never used it myself.

8
  • 7
    This is what I regularly use, and I can highly recommend it. Jul 27, 2010 at 16:44
  • 5
    Let me second that, I use it as well, the only thing I haven't (yet) been able to automate with it is running of 'makeglossaries' (part of the 'glossaries' package). For everything else it works great, automatic dependency tracking (even using multi-file documents).
    – Giel
    Aug 6, 2010 at 13:53
  • 4
    Solutions for latexmk + makeglossaries: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1226/…
    – doncherry
    Oct 14, 2011 at 15:01
  • 2
    If you run latexmk -pvc, it will monitor your files for changes. See magic.aladdin.cs.cmu.edu/2007/11/06/… Sep 24, 2013 at 14:36
  • 1
    I'm presently using latexmk, and quite happy with its functionality. Jul 9, 2014 at 3:13
59
+50

Try arara. It also has a great manual.

\expandafter\thecomment

Arara provides us with ways (rules) to compile the document that are specific to the document. The rules for compilation are put inside the document. Hence, compilation boils down to a simple arara yourtexfile.

First, install arara and make sure that the arara executable is included in system path. Arara also needs java runtime environment (jre) to be installed. To use arara we should add the rules inside the document itself as in the following code. Save this code as yourfile.tex and execute arara yourfile:

% arara: pdflatex: {synctex: yes}
% arara: makeindex: { style: yourfile }
% arara: biber
% arara: pdflatex: {synctex: yes}
% arara: pdflatex: {synctex: yes}
% arara: clean: {files: [yourfile.aux, yourfile.idx, yourfile.ilg, yourfile.ind, yourfile.log, yourfile.bbl, yourfile.bcf, yourfile.ist, yourfile.blg, yourfile.run.xml]}
%
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\usepackage{makeidx}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.ist}
 heading_prefix "{\\bfseries "
 heading_suffix "\\hfil}\\nopagebreak\n"
 headings_flag  1
 delim_0 "\\dotfill "
 delim_1 "\\dotfill "
 delim_2 "\\dotfill "
 delim_r "\\textendash"
 suffix_2p "\\nohyperpage{\\,f.}"
 suffix_3p "\\nohyperpage{\\,ff.}"
\end{filecontents}
\usepackage[backend=biber]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}
\makeindex
\begin{document}
A citation\cite{companion} and an index entry\index{bla} and some arbitrary text.
\printbibliography
\printindex
\end{document}

To comment out an arara directive, just put ! like

% !arara: makeindex

For more details, consult the excellent arara guide.

14
  • 2
    Could you expand this answer? As it is, it's more of a comment than an answer.
    – doncherry
    Dec 21, 2012 at 17:47
  • 6
    @doncherry Also \expandafter\thecomment is great! It took a while, until I realized the meaning … ;-)
    – Speravir
    Dec 21, 2012 at 23:29
  • 5
    Arara requires Java :(
    – AIB
    May 23, 2013 at 22:09
  • 3
    I've just started trying to use arara. It is more complex than it appears but this is partly because the manual is a bit buggy. I'm wondering, though, about two things. The first is that arara as configured in this example looks as if it will be entirely insensitive to the need to execute steps. That is, it will compile x number of times and always run biber regardless. The second is that I'm not clear whether it will proceed to stage 2 if stage 1 returns a non-zero exit code. I do really like it configuration per document since Kile ignores even stand % !TEX lines, but I'm unsure...
    – cfr
    Jun 1, 2014 at 22:47
  • 2
    @Harish: The tool is still being developed, and it's well and alive. :) The only problem is my lack of time to write a proper manual for it, since version 4.0 provides both qualitative and quantitative steps. The code is more mature and stable and rules are more powerful than ever. But I have to find time to write the manual (my thesis has the higher priority right now). This is my presentation about arara in the GuIT user meeting 2015: vimeo.com/144052535 Jan 1, 2016 at 9:30
40

I did a large amount of research for a very similar StackOverflow question. To summarize the problems of each tool:

  • latexmk will overwrite your document in place, frequently causing your viewer to display an incomplete document (eg when there are errors). Its error support is bad.

  • rubber will overwrite your document in place (see above). It also frequently doesn't update your document enough.

  • rubber-info prints errors spectacularly, and is better than all other tools at this task. It can be used seperately from rubber, with any other tool.

  • vim-latexsuite has an awful build system. Avoid.

  • I couldn't make ltx work.

  • MikTeX is windows only.

  • latex-makefile doesn't allow you use pdflatex, only latex -> ps -> pdf. It also misses bibtex sometimes.

My final solution constantly rebuilds the document via pdflatex, only overwriting when the document has changed (for your viewing pleasure). It relies on rubber-info for errors. I set vim to save the file after every X keystrokes, so that my script constantly rebuilds.

10
  • 9
    Regarding overwriting in place: Many viewers nowadays handle this very well. For example, Preview.app (standard part of Mac OS X) doesn't seem to have any problems with that – when you change windows from your editor to Preview, it'll notice that the document has changed and reload it. On Linux, modern PDF viewers seemed to work very well, too; after all, this is a very common use case. Aug 17, 2010 at 10:53
  • Regarding rubber not updating your document enough: I have never seen this with Latex documents that compile without errors. This seems to happen only if Latex, Bibtex or one of the other tools terminates with an error. (It can be extremely confusing, however, as rubber -Wall foo.tex does not necessarily print anything if something very unexpected happens; you need to inspect the log files by yourself or re-run with -v -v -v.) Aug 17, 2010 at 10:57
  • 1
    @Jukka: The problem with viewers is that they don't wait until the document is finished. So they render the first 50 pages of a 200 page doc. Aug 21, 2010 at 14:51
  • 1
    @TH.: By the way, if you prefer atomic renames, you can use it with any tool. Just write a one-line shell script that runs something like your-favourite-tool foo.tex && mv foo.pdf foo-real.pdf. Sep 5, 2010 at 12:45
  • 2
    @TH, look into Skim. It doesn't require that application change before updating.
    – Reid
    Jan 6, 2011 at 16:01
36

There is a tool named Rubber. It is for instance used by Gedit LaTeX plugin. It should recognize which tools to run (BibTeX, makeindex...) and run (pdf)latex and them in right order and how many times it is needed to converge to the ready file. It behaves like make, i.e. it does not recreate files that it thinks won't change recompiled (this can be omitted by adding -f option).

Compiling to dvi:

rubber filename.tex

Compiling to pdf:

rubber --pdf filename.tex

Cleaning compilation debris:

rubber --clean filename.tex
9
  • 3
    link: pps.jussieu.fr/~beffara/soft/rubber Jul 26, 2010 at 20:03
  • 3
    It's not Linux specific. I'm using it on Mac OS X nowadays. Excellent, highly recommended (and, unfortunately, not actively maintained). Jul 26, 2010 at 20:06
  • 1
    Does it support multibib?
    – Dima
    Jul 27, 2010 at 12:45
  • 1
    I don't think so. Still it is in major linux distros' repositories.
    – user7
    Jul 27, 2010 at 21:49
  • 1
    @Dima: Yes, multibib with rubber seems to work ok. Aug 4, 2010 at 20:51
28

Scons seems to be the ultimate LaTeX building tool.

Let me elaborate on Karsten W.'s answer on the configuration file.

A typical build script for building LaTeX can be the following. Put this in a file called SConstruct:

# make sure scons finds tex executables:
import os
env = Environment(ENV=os.environ)
# target and source:
pdf_output = env.PDF(target='main.pdf', source='main.tex')
# Add synctex
env.AppendUnique(PDFLATEXFLAGS='-synctex=1')
# make sure that the pdf is reloaded properly (e.g., in Skim)
env.Precious(pdf_output)

You can build the pdf simply by running

scons

Notice that, quite amazingly, scons will detect the changes in the files \included in the main.tex file and also the bibliography file!

3
  • This works really nice. For XeLaTeX: environment['PDFLATEX'] = 'xelatex'. Oct 11, 2015 at 11:13
  • It doesn't seem to handle "Rerun to get cross-references right", or am I doing something wrong?
    – Mark
    Aug 2, 2016 at 13:19
  • Can the answer be extended to include how to pass the option -synctex=1? Mar 8, 2017 at 12:12
21

For emacs users, AUCTeX provides the command TeX-command-master (bound to C-c C-c by default) that doesn't quite answer the request, but nevertheless helps a lot. The command runs (pdf)latex, bibtex, and makeindex on a .tex file as required. You do have to invoke it multiple times, but it does a pretty good job of sorting out what commands need to be run in what order. (I have had the occasional document that outsmarted it, mostly ones using the exam.cls document class.) Note that TeX files must be parsed for this to work.

Starting from version 11.89, there is also the possibility to automatically run all commands needed to completely build the document at once: TeX-command-run-all, bound to C-c C-a. It's like running C-c C-c multiple times, it will compile the document until it's ready and automatically start the viewer if there are no errors. This feature can be considered a real automatic compilation tool.

6
  • Yes, it's great. You can just hit C-c C-c, and it will call whichever relevant compilation command is necessary, and "View" if it's fully compiled. Jul 26, 2010 at 21:57
  • A hook to make it automagic in AUCTeX to rerun the next command?
    – Dima
    Jul 27, 2010 at 12:44
  • YaTeX is also nice: yatex.org Jul 27, 2010 at 21:08
  • 5
    Annoyingly, it doesn't know to rerun bibtex if the .bib has changed, but the .tex hasn't. but overall it's still much better than doing it by hand.
    – Seamus
    Aug 5, 2010 at 17:40
  • 2
    @Seamus You should file a bug report. Apr 1, 2012 at 20:00
19

Generation of references is handled automatically by the ConTeXt toolchain, so you never have to worry about remembering how many runs you need. The example Makefile would look like this if you used ConTeXt:

paper.pdf: paper.tex
    context paper
2
  • Isn't texexec the preferred way to typeset ConTeXt files?
    – Sharpie
    Aug 11, 2010 at 7:04
  • 2
    In mkII yes, but with mkIV things got simpler (or different). In the example above I'm asuming one is using mkIV.
    – helcim
    Aug 11, 2010 at 13:31
13

I find GNU Make incredibly convenient for parsing. In vim I've mapped F2 to make, so when I've edited something I can just hit F2 and switch to evince to see it instantly.

Below is my Makefile, which also handles parsing graphviz files.

GRAPHS=overview_dot.pdf hello_dot.pdf
TARGET=something.pdf
TEXFILES=file1.tex file2.tex file3.tex
HELPFILES=

all: $(TARGET)

$(TARGET): out.pdf
    mv out.pdf $(TARGET)

out.pdf: $(GRAPHS) $(TEXFILES) $(HELPFILES) Makefile

clean:
    rm -rf *.aux *.log *.out *.toc *.eps *.data *~ $(GRAPHS) $(TARGET)

%.svg: %.dot
    dot $*.dot -Tsvg -o $*.svg

%.png: %.dot
    dot $*.dot -Tpng -o $*.png

%.ps: %.dot
    dot $*.dot -Tps -o $*.ps

%_dot.pdf: %.dot
    dot $*.dot -Tpdf -o $*_dot.pdf

%_neato.pdf: %.dot
    neato $*.dot -Tpdf -o $*_neato.pdf

%_circo.pdf: %.dot
    circo $*.dot -Tpdf -o $*_circo.pdf

%_dia.eps: %.dia
    dia $*.dia -e $*_dia.eps

%_eps.pdf: %.eps
    epstopdf $*.eps -o $*_eps.pdf

%.pdf: %.tex
    pdflatex $*.tex
    pdflatex $*.tex
    pdflatex $*.tex
1
  • 13
    So you maintain this yourself? Is 3 runs of TeX always enough (hint: no)? Does this handle bibtex-generated references? Does it recognize when changed included files necessitate rebuilds? Jul 26, 2010 at 21:26
13

In addition to all of the good answers above, users on Windows using MiKTeX can use the texify program, which has a number of options to adjust output mode (DVI or PDF), options for BibTeX and MakeIndex and so on.

3
  • For me as a MiKTeX user, texify seemed like the way to go. Unfortunately, although it is possible to switch from bibtex to bibtex8 by setting the respective environment variable, I never managed to pass options to bibtex8. As I need the option --wolfgang to run bibtex8 together with the biblatex package, texify is out of the question.
    – lockstep
    Aug 6, 2010 at 11:55
  • @lockstep. You can use bibtex8 --wolfgang with MikTeX. In WinEdt, for example, go to execution modes, select BibTeX and switch executable to bibtex8 and add "--wolfgang" to the switches. Aug 11, 2010 at 5:23
  • I know - I have used the --wolfgang switch with TeXnicCenter. However, I can't set a bibtex(8)-option with texify (the compiler driver that comes with MiKTeX).
    – lockstep
    Aug 11, 2010 at 7:54
10

I like LatexMake. It defines a big pile of pattern rules for make to automate the most common steps of compiling a LaTeX document. Using it is a simple matter of copying one makefile into your document's directory, or include LaTeX.mk (as named in Debian's latex-make package) in a makefile you already have, or symlink to it if your makefile wouldn't need to include anything else.

One really neat feature about it is that it detects dependencies on included files, and rebuilds as much of your document as needed to reflect those changes.

Another neat feature is that it knows about things like bibtex, and runs the appropriate commands.

1
9

With all solutions I tried back in the day (definitely not all), I had at least one of the following issues.

  1. You have to manually specify which commands should be executed how often and in which order.
  2. Temporary files crowd the document folder.
  3. No automatic rebuild on file changes.
  4. No support for external tool X and hard to integrate.
  5. No help at all with myriads of log files.

So I set out to build my own tool which I named ltx2any¹ around the following core features.

  1. Figure out exactly what tools have to be run at runtime and execute them in the right order.
  2. Determine dynamically how often pdflatex (or other engine) has to be run.
  3. Copy the document tree and compile somewhere else, keeping temporary files tucked away.
  4. As an option, rebuild automatically when files change.
  5. Offer an easy interface for adding new engines and external tools.
  6. Aggregate shell outputs resp. log files of all executed commands.

Basically, most documents should compile just right by typing ltx2any file.tex, provided the necessary extensions exist.

Since I started, I added:

  • Parallel execution of external tools if possible (e.g. TikZ externalisation).
  • Logs are parsed for error messages, warnings and information, counted and presented in an easy to digest format.²
  • Rudimentary interactive shell in auto-rebuild mode, including setting options and requesting rebuilds of specific TikZ images.

It's definitely not perfect and has some rough edges (in particular w.r.t. the use of evolving libraries) but it works well enough for me.

I should probably add that you'll need Ruby >= 2.0.x.

Pull requests for extensions are appreciated!


  1. It totally does not deserve the name anymore. I'll have to come up with a new one for the first "stable" release.
  2. Due to the awful situation that is arbitrary log formatting, this probably has holes like Swiss cheese. I appreciate any reports of not or mis-parsed messages.
2
  • 3
    Congrats on the new tool, the more the merrier. :) It's a good learning experience and a pleasant way of making the TeX world better. :) Jul 21, 2014 at 20:23
  • 1
    @PauloCereda: Thanks! It's not really new, though. :> I hope somebody finds it useful!
    – Raphael
    Jul 21, 2014 at 20:26
8

It does more than just compile documents, being a fully featured editor, but Kile is very good at completing all the compilation steps.

You can also define your own build processes which use command line tools. By adding a ViewPDF option at the end of the compile your pdf viewer of choice will be launched (or updated) after a successful compilation.

7

I use scons, a python based make tool. Some documents I have contain R code, scons (with rpy2) works well in handling them. I had to program the rules for document creation by myself, but it was basically calling texify.

3
  • Does it know the appropriate rules to apply and conditions to look for, or is that logic that you have fed it? Aug 4, 2010 at 23:15
  • I also use Scons, I like that it has the rules for TeX builtin, so I don't need to care about them. On the other hand, it's somewhat complicated (for example when I want the output in a different directory). Aug 7, 2010 at 20:51
  • 1
    @Novelocrat: Modern scons has the basic rules of LaTeX/PDFLaTeX built in, including bibtex handling, and if you want it to do something more complicated, you can program it yourself. On the other hand, the documentation is somewhat lacking. Aug 14, 2011 at 8:49
7

There is nothing wrong with Makefiles, the magic is to understand the dependency chain that exist so make don't rerun everything all the time and when he reruns he does this in the right order.

How about a simple example with table of context, that is stored in a .toc file. So just add .toc as a dependency in the Makefile, that way it will run twice the first time but only once the following times.

NAME=MyTestFile

pdf: $(NAME).toc
    pdflatex $(NAME).tex

$(NAME).toc: 
    pdflatex -draftmode $(NAME).tex 

And when it is time to to a final version make sure you do a "clean" so everything builds and links together in a correct way.


Update: After reading you question (and comment), I will change my answer to. There is nothing wrong with makefiles but it is not the most optimal solution for all people in all circumstances.

If you don't plan to add some command line magic in your makefile and never plan to script anything at all maybe the makefile method is unnecessary complicated.

But if you plan to use LaTeX in a little bit unorthodox way and with some command line magic, a Makefile will help you a lot.

4
  • You realize Make is supposed to work based on not having to clean things out and rebuild, right? You recognize the silliness in every user constructing these rules for themself? Or do you recode LaTeX and whatever macro packages you wish to use for each new document you construct? Aug 16, 2010 at 0:24
  • I did this once, then depending on what kind of document I modify the rules slightly. And then I use my makefile to add "strange" things from the system into my document like this example (tex.stackexchange.com/questions/161/…). And sometime I integrate it into another projects, and in those cases it is actually simpler to just add a handful of rules in the "other" makefile. But it does look strange/silly if you only look at the first basic building blocks like this example.
    – Johan
    Aug 16, 2010 at 5:40
  • 2
    One advantage of makefiles is that (once you get the hang of it) it is easy to add other targets than just for typesetting. I don't know of latexmk/rubber support such things, but I usually have targets for 'distrib', 'clean', 'draft' etc. Aug 16, 2010 at 5:59
  • @Taco: Rubber has the switch "--clean" which is similar to "make clean" (except that everything is automatic – it knows what to delete based on your Latex source code and its dependencies). For more complicated things like creating a zip package ready for submission, I usually use shell scripts or Makefiles (which first invoke rubber to build everything and only after that do the packaging). Aug 17, 2010 at 10:45
6

For completeness, I will mention autolatex (project page). I have not used it. It's implemented with a combination of perl scripts and makefiles.

With autolatex you can execute on the command line:

$ autolatex -f mydoc.tex

This generates the makefiles in the current directory and makes the default targets.

6

Only for Windows users. Create a batch file as follows. Let's name it batch.bat.

echo off

rem %1 TeX input filename without extension

rem %2 The number of times to invoke pdflatex in draftmode

del "%~1.pdf"

for /l %%x in (1,1,%2) do pdflatex --shell-escape -draftmode -interaction=batchmode "%~1.tex"

pdflatex --shell-escape "%~1.tex"

for %%x in (aux log out toc nav snm) do (del "%~1.%%x")

It takes 2 mandatory arguments:

  • %1 represents the TeX input file name without extension.
  • %2 represents the number of times you invoke pdflatex in draftmode. There are %2 plus one pdflatex invocations in total.

Once the PDF file has been successfully generated, the auxiliary files are deleted to save more data storage, etc, etc.

You can invoke the batch as follows:

enter image description here

You can edit and insert other calls to the batch file above to meet your need.

5
  • In what way is this better than using make? Jan 4, 2013 at 16:57
  • 3
    @StephanLehmke There is no make on Windows, so it's more normal to code-you-own (see the LaTeX3 build scripts, for example, where we use `make on *nix and batch files on Windows).
    – Joseph Wright
    Jan 4, 2013 at 16:58
  • 3
    @StephanLehmke: I cannot compare because I don't know make. :-) Jan 4, 2013 at 16:58
  • 1
    @AdorableCreature It might not pay you to clean all auxiliary files immediately (as you may have errors that need correction). Rather have a second batch file that you can call it clean.bat to clear them.
    – yannisl
    Jan 5, 2013 at 6:08
  • @YiannisLazarides: I agree with you. Jan 5, 2013 at 9:33
5

Like @crazymaik, I’ve set up a script that runs continually in the background so the file is automatically compiled whenever I save. The idea for that originally comes from Paul Biggar.

Mine uses latexmk instead of rubber (however, I use rubber-info from inside Vim to parse the log file). This has the advantage of working out of the box with TeXLive.

The script is a bit longer – I think the comments sufficiently explain why this is. I’ve posted the source as a gist on GitHub.

#!/bin/bash

# Author: Konrad Rudolph
# Original idea: Paul Biggar
#
# Usage: texit [--latex] target
#
#  --latex: Use pdflatex instead of xelatex as the processor. Optional
#  target:  The name of the target (i.e. the source file without trailing `.tex`)

…
4

texi2dvi, from the texinfo package, is a tool similar to MiKTeX's texify (actually, IIRC, MiKTeX has an alias to texify called texi2dvi). It is a front-end to both LaTeX and PDFLaTeX, and through environment variables you can specify extra options to either processor (and even run XeLaTeX).

4
+100

My objective was to be able to compile easily even if the system haven't latex installed or the package are not up-to-date compared to my own system (I used several computer without all the package or with a 2 years back version).

I have a git repository to centralized all my source (you can use a draft repository easily). A Makefile similar to Charlie.

In my computer crontab:

* * * * * "cd /path/to/repository && script.sh"

and in script.sh:

#!/bin/sh    
git pull > update.tmp
TEST=`cat update.tmp`
COMP=`echo "Already up-to-date."`
if [ "$TEST" != "$COMP" ] #if the repository is up-do-date their is no need to recompile
then
    date > update.tmp #to have a file with the start compilation date (not needed)
    make #I use --interaction=nonstopmode as LaTeX flags to have no deadlock
    git add main.pdf main.log update.tmp #could be usefull to have the result and the log in case of mistake
    git commit -m "automatic push from script.sh"
    git push
fi

Of course you need no password on your git repository or to have configure it with an ssh key (but it's another subject)

If you work in a colaborative project it's a way for everyone to have the same system easily.

Futher more, you can bind your editor to make an automatic push at each save.

3

I use a shell script to automatically compile the file with rubber every time i save the file and my viewer automatically reloads the pdf.

#!/bin/sh

if [ "$#" != 2 ]; then
    echo "USAGE: onsave <file> <action>"
    exit 1
fi

file=$1
action=$2
last_modified="0"

while [ 1 ]
do
    current=`stat -c "%Y" $file`
    if [ $current -gt $last_modified ]; then
        `$action`
        last_modified=$current
    fi
    sleep 2
done
2
  • Presumably you call this as onsave %s rubber ? Jul 27, 2010 at 21:35
  • Most of the time i have a Makefile, so i would just call onsave paper.tex make but if you want to call rubber instead and create a pdf onsave paper.tex "rubber --pdf paper.tex"
    – Maik
    Jul 28, 2010 at 8:17
3

Those makefile are always a bit difficult, in part because they have to interact with the engine to find out how many compilation runs are necessary, which additional tools need to be run etc. and these steps are usually harder than trivial with makefiles.

That being said, I'd suggest you to try latex-makefile, which is a make-only solution, which goes long ways to accomplish what's needed. It's not complete, however it's better than most makefile solutions out there, tries covering all generation steps including converting images to right formats and most importantly it supports PDF(La)TeX and Xe(La)TeX out of the box now!

3

I posted some sample makefiles for TeX/Sweave on my site: http://cgibbons.berkeley.edu/Research/writings.html

One makefile does a simple compilation, another compiles a Beamer file into presentation slides, handout slides, and a notes page. The third takes a tex file that contains questions and solutions to an exam or problem set and turns it into a plain version to pass out and a solutions set.

Using some tips from the web (don't remember where), the following code only runs bibtex or reruns pdflatex if a warning is found in the log file produced by the initial pdflatex run:

$(TEXFILE).pdf: $(TEXFILE).tex $(FIGURES) $(INPUTS)
     # Initial run
     pdflatex $(TEXFILE)

     # Run BibTeX if missing citations
         @if(grep "Citation" $(TEXFILE).log > /dev/null);\
          then \
              bibtex $(TEXFILE);\
              pdflatex $(TEXFILE); \
     fi

     # Recompile if instructed
     @if(grep "Rerun" $(TEXFILE).log > /dev/null);\
     then \
         pdflatex $(TEXFILE); \
     fi

Note that $(TEXFILE) is the name of the tex file. Some documentation explaining the code is also available at my site. The documentation also gives code to create an emacs keybinding to save your document and run the makefile.

2

I used a simple bash / shell script for Mac OS X / teTex to produce PDFs of various documents including my master's thesis back several years ago. It basically scans the output produced by pdflatex to see whether it needs to run the document through additional passes and also executes bibtex and makeindex.

The script was inspired by the texify.exe program bundled with the MiKTeX package for Windows.

I'm not sure how well it works for other UNIX-like systems but at the time of initial writing it ran flawlessly on my Mac and a Linux box I tested.

Personally, this is still the solution I use when working with LaTeX documents as it just works for me, no compilation and no cumbersome installation needed, just one executable file.

However, as I haven't developed it further and didn't have the resources to test it extensively with various systems (and have no plans to develop it further), I cannot guarantee for its proper function on other systems than those that I've had at hand.

I hereby release it to the public in hope that it might still be useful for someone out there. You can find it on my user's profile page here.

2

What problem are you trying to solve? Make utility (I use BSD Make) is a perfect tool for automatizing TeX-ing at least on Unix and Unix like systems. If the above Makefile works for you I see nothing wrong with it. I have a little bit more elaborate but fairly simple Makefile which works for most of my needs and can be quickly adapted in the case I need to TeX more complicated document. Tools like Latexmk (Perl), LatexMake and few others that you can find on the ctan make an attempt to anticipate all possible situations/environments for all possible TeX users. Therefore they tent to be very complicated and sometimes do not work well for some people. This is one case in which I would stick to my home cooked Makefile. The advantage of using Perl over Make utility is that Perl is little bit easier to use on Windows (although still feels very awkward) over Make which I think require full blown Cygwin. Maybe somebody can suggest some Python script. Python unlike Perl feels fairly naturally on Windows.

2

Here is an easy was to do the automation: ( I am using TeXWorks in Ubuntu 14.04 Linux Enviroment )

1- add a new typeset tool, (Edit > Preferences > Typesetting > Add Processing tools)

typeseting

2- And use Browse to add your simple bash code:

#!/bin/bash                                                                 

echo "Compiling $1 ..."

file_basename=$2                                                                                                                              

pdflatex $file_basename                                                          
bibtex $file_basename                                                       
pdflatex $file_basename                                                          
pdflatex $file_basename 
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  • Hi and welcome, why is there an extra variable for bibtex? BibTeX should be run on basename.aux so basename should really be enough.
    – Johannes_B
    Apr 8, 2015 at 14:06
  • I got an error using the filename for BibTeX and looked at the arguments passed to the original BibTeX typeset and it was basename. that's why I am passing base name to the bash code.
    – King110
    Apr 8, 2015 at 14:33
  • I didn't look at the code completely, you can simplyfy it by passing $basename to all engines. They will use the according file extension on their own.
    – Johannes_B
    Apr 8, 2015 at 14:46
2

The module UseLATEX for CMake will automatically generate a makefile for you, handling all of the dependencies itself. It works really well for projects that combine C/C++ and LaTeX.

0

latexrun is my preferred way. It is a simple download of a single file and easy to use.

Unless there are no warnings or errors, the output is very limited - and in case there are, it presents warnings and errors clearly.

It also by default collects intermediate files in a subdirectory, so much cleaner than other methods, and is easy to integrate with for example GNU Make.

./latexrun document.tex

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