How to programmatically detect if a LaTeX package is installed?

Question

I am writing a program, and I want it to do different things depending on which LaTeX packages have been installed. My current solution is to automatically generate simple .tex files that \usepackage the packages I care about and then automatically check if pdflatex can compile them or not. This solution seems slow and fragile. What is a better solution?

Edit: The program I am writing is in Python.

Sorry, you want to check this from a program/script and not from inside a LaTeX document? The latter would be shown in Conditional “if a package is available”. — Martin Scharrer, Oct 17 '11 at 18:33
See also Generate list of all installed (La)TeX files which has a similar background, i.e. a script which wants to get a list of all installed LaTeX packages. In your case you would just need to check that list. However, this is platform and probably LaTeX distribution dependent. — Martin Scharrer, Oct 17 '11 at 19:11

score 19 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 17 '11 at 18:37

19

Do you want to detect from inside LaTeX? If so, there is

\IfFileExists{foobar.sty}{true}{false}

If you're external, there is kpsewhich foobar.sty, which gives you the path to the foobar.sty that latex would use.

answered Oct 17 '11 at 18:37

Ulrich Schwarz

9,830

Is kpsewhich available only if some TeX distribution is installed? I'm thinking to use it to test if there is TeX compiler installed. – Sigur Nov 05 '16 at 23:03
1

@Sigur: yes. You might get better results with trying to run which tex and checking the return code of that, assuming unix. – Ulrich Schwarz Nov 06 '16 at 06:53

How to programmatically detect if a LaTeX package is installed?

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