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I wrote a LaTeX package (actually a beamer theme, quite macro-heavy). With this theme I have a document that compiles perfectly on my own computer but compilation fails on the computer of my boss.

I already asked my boss to compile with \tracingmacros=1 and compared the resulting logs. From this I could see mostly... nothing, except that both installations contain identical versions for all packages included (by grepping for version numbers and looking at the diff).

I forgot to ask my boss to also include \tracingassigns=1 (actually, I figured that I would be able to debug with only the tracingmacros data). Obviously, my time on my boss' computer is very limited, and the best that I could do for now would be to send a small preamble and ask for the log file produced.

Is there anything else I should add to that preamble?

For reference, the TeX version we have (old, but that's a datum of the problem and not something I could change):

pdfTeX 3.1415926-2.4-1.40.13 (TeX Live 2012)
kpathsea version 6.1.0

(Also for obvious reasons, I am not allowed to put the TeX file online, and will have to do the debugging myself).

edit: My particular problem was solved - this was actually a babel/beamer conflict that had nothing to do with my package :-).

Thanks for the comments, TIL about \listfiles in particular!

Circonflexe
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    if you both have tl2012 and the same packages and same document you should get the same output.... unless error is elsewhere eg using latex instead of pdflatex. What is the error message? – David Carlisle Oct 03 '16 at 15:52
  • Debugging .tex documents is often best done by slowly commenting out chunks of text and seeing if the error disappears. If compilation D fails, then you comment out some more text and compilation E succeeds, you'll know what the cause approximately is. – jon Oct 03 '16 at 19:30
  • Also make sure that your packages are up to date on both computers. – John Kormylo Oct 03 '16 at 23:24
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    Try to call \listfiles in your preamble (to list all used packages with version number and date) and compare your log files on both computers. – Paul Gaborit Oct 03 '16 at 23:49
  • @David: I did not think of that, thanks for the suggestion! @jon: I know how to usually debug a TeX document, this is not the question. @John: they are not up to date (can't fix that), but as I said, they are at the same versions (as far as I can say now). @Paul: Thanks for the comment, I did not know about \listfiles! – Circonflexe Oct 04 '16 at 06:42
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because the OP said that the problem is now fixed and it that it was caused by a conflict between babel and beamer. –  Oct 05 '16 at 08:14
  • The problem that was solved was not the subject of the question (I did not give enough info to solve it anyway). The question was about “how to get enough info 'remotely'”, which still stands (and is very much an on-topic TeX question). – Circonflexe Oct 06 '16 at 06:25

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