@ Luke Maciak:

Luke Maciak wrote:

@ gruntless:
Does latexmk use pdflatex or just latex?

latexmk can use basically whatever tool you want. Many of the programs to use are going to be inferred by latexmk itself, some of them can be specified with options when executing it, and some of them can be specified in a config file. For example, to compile and watch changes each time I save the file, I create a config file named .latexmkrc with the contents:


$pdf_previewer = 'start okular %O %S';


where okular is the pdf viewer I’ll use, but you can use whatever you want.

The I just run:


latexmk -xelatex -pvc world_domination


In my work directory, the main latex file is world_domination.tex

-pvc is the option to tell the program to keep compiling and updating the pdf, and -xelatex is … well, an option to specify that I work with that tool instead of the pure latex.

latexmk is usually intelligent enough to know what programs to call and how many times (for cross-referencing)

@ Luke Maciak:
You should really learn about make and do a series about it.
If people new more about make they would not waste so much time setting up complex build tools for small projects when a make file and some simple scripts would do the job.

If it is powerful enough for the Linux kernel it is probably powerful enough four you.

@ Chris Wellons:

Ah, got it. Makes perfect sense now. :)

@ Luke Maciak:

The $< is an automatic variable that is equal to the first prerequisite (in this case it’s “output.tex”). I used it to stay DRY. Think of is like the less-than bracket in a Unix shell, providing stdin from a file. The command to build the target becomes “pdflatex output.tex” with the variables filled in.

Note that there’s a tab not being displayed in my example Makefile code block, so that second line should be tabbed out. Here’s a more elaborate pastebin version with proper formating: http://pastebin.com/hDaacnJ1.

The PDF isn’t recompiled every second simply because make will see that the .pdf file is newer than the .tex file. It will only perform the build when a prerequisite is updated, otherwise it just checks the timestamps and exits. This is one of make’s core features.

@ gruntless:

Does latexmk use pdflatex or just latex?

@ Chris Wellons:

Wow, that’s much simpler and much more unixy. :P Thanks.

Btw, can you explain $< ensure that the file is not recompiled every second? I don’t think I’ve seen this makefile/shell idiom before.

Call me old fashioned, but I’d use the “watch” command for this. :-) I always set up a Makefile anyway.


output.pdf : output.tex
$(PDFLATEX) $<


So running “watch -n1 make” is trivial. The Makefile ensures the PDF only updates as needed, and, as you mentioned, Evince (my favorite PDF viewer), will automatically refresh when the PDF updates. Usually I don’t want the automatic updates, though, and instead I run make from within Emacs with a keystroke, which is immediately reflected in the adjacent Evince window.

If watch is too much of a hack for you, you can always use an inotify command line program instead.

To live-compile a LaTeX document I just do: latexmk -pvc and preview in Mac OS X’s Preview.