Which package version am I using?

Question

Is there a LaTeX command for printing the versions of the currently installed packages? I need to know the installed version of the pgfplots package.

with vanilla TeXLive distro, On command line/Terminal invoking tlmgr info pgfplots gives the version of pgfplots installed. — texenthusiast, Apr 04 '14 at 14:56
See also: distributions - Automatically Determine which TeXLive Version is being used - TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange -- tex core - Detecting which version of the LaTeX format is in use - TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange -- @ifpackageloaded — user202729, May 18 '22 at 23:20

score 116 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 13 '11 at 11:52

116

Add \listfiles to your preamble and then look at the .log file. This will tell you the current version of all the packages loaded.

answered Mar 13 '11 at 11:52

Seamus

73,242

38

Package versions are announced in the .log file even without \listfiles. – Andrey Vihrov Mar 13 '11 at 12:28
13

@Andrey: makes them easier to find, thought :-) – Joseph Wright Mar 13 '11 at 12:30
6

It might be interesting to write a command line tool to check that. – raphink Sep 16 '11 at 08:54
3

@ℝaphink I have attempted, but the fact that TeX hard-wraps the output makes it very difficult. – Sean Allred Oct 24 '15 at 16:30
@SeanAllred You can increase max_print_line in texmf.cnf to have it (practically) not wrap; see this question. – ShreevatsaR May 05 '17 at 06:06
If using pdfLatex, within the log output the result of \listfiles starts with the line File List – PWillms Oct 31 '17 at 17:32
Won't it be even better to add \listfiles in the very beginning of the file, even before \documentclass? – Evan Aad Nov 15 '17 at 06:59

Joseph Wright · Answer 2 · 2024-01-22T20:21:02.327

64

If you need to know this 'programmatically', then you can use the LaTeX kernel function \IfPackageAtLeast to test by date:

\IfPackageAtLeast{<package>}{2011/03/13}
  {%
    % Do something for the newer version
  }
  {%
    % Do something different for the older version
  }%

The information is stored inside a special macro, so if you just want to 'take a peek' you can use that. Taking pgfplots as an example

\expandafter\show\csname ver@pgfplots.sty\endcsname

Notice here that this needs the full file name we are interested in, so works for any file that contains suitable information (i.e. form \ProvidesPackage, \ProvidesClass or \ProvidesFile).

edited Jan 22 '24 at 20:21

answered Mar 13 '11 at 12:34

Joseph Wright

259,911
34
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1,036

1

you can load the name into a macro by \edef\foo{\csname ver@pgfplots.sty\endcsname} – wasteofspace Mar 13 '11 at 12:48
1

Nowadays it can be accessed with the name \IfPackageAtLeastTF. (documentation at no-idea-where, source code in source2e.pdf.) – user202729 May 18 '22 at 15:50
Remark, if <package> happens to be expl3 then it only work after explicit \usepackage{expl3} even in versions where expl3 are available by default. Before loading it, it's in ExplFileDate or the (internal, do not use) \c__kernel_expl_date_tl – user202729 Jul 13 '22 at 02:57

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 27 '19 at 19:53

To find a package version, you can just open the package source file on your file system and look the version directly by yourself with some text editor as Sublime Text.

Here are the paths and references for the latex paths on Linux and Windows for the biblatex package:

Miktex (Windows) D:\Programs\Mikyex\latex\texmfs\install\tex\latex\biblatex-abnt\bbx\abnt.bbx
- How can I manually install a package on MiKTeX (Windows)
- On the file abnt.bbx, you will find this at his top, , where the version is: v3.1
```
...
\ProvidesFile{abnt.bbx}%
[2017/07/28\space v3.1\space ABNT BibLaTeX citation style]%
...
```
TeX Live (Linux) /usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/latex/biblatex-abnt/abnt.bbx
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/296681/latex-filepaths-in-ubuntu
- On the file abnt.bbx, you will find this at his top, where the version is: v3.2
```
...
\ProvidesFile{abnt.bbx}%
[2017/11/09\space v3.2\space ABNT BibLaTeX citation style]%
...
```

note you should check the files using the paths reported by tex in the log not "reference" paths as above. The most common issues for which people need to check versions is where they have multiple tex installations and tex is not using the package they think it is using (eg miktex user and admin installs, or linux tex and a vanilla texlive from tug etc) So the important question is not do you have the latest version of the package installed, it is is your tex using that version. — David Carlisle, Apr 27 '19 at 20:15

Which package version am I using?

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