How can I keep a clean document folder with custom .cls, .sty, .bst files in a separate subfolder?

Question

I am using a Makefile for generating a document from its tex source. The whole project consisting of own input files (.tex, .bib, .eps, ...) and non-pre-installed static input files (.cls, .sty, .bst) is kept under version control (git) for colloborative writing. I try to avoid messing up the main folder and use subdirectories for output and different kinds of input files. All files which are not available within TeX Live should be in the repository to allow everyone a simple git clone and make to create the document. My question is: is there any convenient way which allows me to place all .cls, .sty, .bst into a ./texmf folder with in the document tree:

document-folder
├── .git/...
├── graphics/fig1-<...>.eps
├── graphics/fig2-<...>.eps
├── graphics/...
├── output/docname.pdf
├── output/docname.aux
├── output/...
├── texmf/docclass.cls
├── texmf/custom-package.sty
├── texmf/...
├── docname.tex
├── docname.bib
└── Makefile

The Makefile looks like this

LATEX    := pdflatex
ODIR     := ./output
LATEXOPTS:= --output-dir=$(ODIR)

    $(TEXFILE).pdf: $(TEXFILE).tex $(TEXFILE).bib
         $(LATEX) $(LATEXOPTS) $(TEXFILE).tex

Following solution works but as colloborators have to adjust environment variables every time or their .bashrc for this project, I am not really happy about it:

$ export TEXINPUTS=".:./texmf:~/texmf:$TEXINPUTS"
$ make

Changing environment variables within a Makefile is not possible as far as I know.

Note that in your question as well as all the answers, a colon (:) is used as path separator. In windows, this does not work, as a semi-colon (;) is used instead. Since linux supports semi-colons as well, it seems like a good practice to me to use them everywhere for better portability. — ingomueller.net, Jul 29 '16 at 09:58

score 23 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 25 '21 at 01:15

23

I use latexmk for some document building, and I've wanted something like this for a long time. Especially when I have document and class under version control.

I discovered that you can configure latexmk with a local latexmkrc file in the document's directory. latexmkrc files are just perl code.

So in this workflow, if the class files are in ./texmf you can add the following line to a local latexmkrc:

$ENV{'TEXINPUTS'}='./texmf//:' . $ENV{'TEXINPUTS'};

This works on my Mac, and I assume on any unix machine that uses environment variables this way. For windows, and indeed for any platform, latexmk's author John Collins has a solution at his answer to a similar question.

edited Jan 25 '21 at 01:15

Leone

576

answered Apr 05 '12 at 12:15

Matthew Leingang

44,937
14
131
195

Thanks. This is good to know, too. However, at the moment I still use existing Makefiles and my colleagues are not aware of latexmk. I will give latexmk a try at the next occasion. The customization feature via a latexmkrc file sounds like a neat way to deal with user-dependent preferences. – Hotschke Apr 05 '12 at 17:11
Could you clarify that latexmkrc doesn't need a preceding dot in its name? – einpoklum Jun 20 '16 at 21:04
@einpoklum According to the manual, it will work with or without the dot. – Matthew Leingang Jun 21 '16 at 00:28
@MatthewLeingang this does not seem to work on Windows. – Dr Krishnakumar Gopalakrishnan Feb 13 '19 at 19:01
@Krishna Unfortunately I have no experience with latexmk and Windows. There is some documentation by third party users on how to make it work though. – Matthew Leingang Feb 13 '19 at 20:14
@MatthewLeingang nah. Unfortunately that help doc is too shallow for this purpose. – Dr Krishnakumar Gopalakrishnan Feb 13 '19 at 20:20
@MatthewLeingang If you are okay with it, please update your answer to point users to https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/474756/latexmk-is-unable-to-locate-the-paths-to-my-tex-files-after-configuring-texmfinp/474915#474915 for a platform-indepent awesome answer by latexmk creator John Collins – Dr Krishnakumar Gopalakrishnan Feb 14 '19 at 18:11
@Krishna: sure thing. Glad you got an answer! – Matthew Leingang Feb 14 '19 at 18:19

score 13 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 04 '12 at 14:07

You can in fact that environment variables inside a Makefile (tested with GNU make only). You need to do the following:

export VAR=value without quotes

If you reference the previous value of the same variable you need to use the := assignment instead which expands the value immediately. The normal = is expanding the value at every use and will lead to an recursive assignment, which make detects and reports as an error. There are no quotes required around the value and using them might cause trouble. Also variables must be written as ${VAR} on the right-hand side, not $VAR.

So you can add the following line to your Makefile, at best at the beginning:

export TEXINPUTS:=.:./texmf:~/texmf:${TEXINPUTS}

How can I keep a clean document folder with custom .cls, .sty, .bst files in a separate subfolder?

2 Answers2

Linked