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I am unfortunately not finding my answer anywhere. So far, I have only used LaTeX in Overleaf. I was hoping to start writing LaTeX from vim. I thus want to download only a compiler for LaTeX, and nothing else. Analogous to Python, where you download a compiler and packages to load into files.

Thanks

user19604250
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    https://www.latex-project.org/get/ lists several options. But you should have come across that already. Is there a reason they won't work? Are you looking for something else? As a text editor, the main point of vim is to edit the .tex file that LaTeX will later compile. – Teepeemm Jul 26 '22 at 22:43
  • Also, have a look at this post. Despite its age, it should still be correct now. – Miyase Jul 26 '22 at 23:01
  • Try MiKTeX (also listed there). Unlike TeX Live, it does not include all the packages bundled. Assume the motivation is to save bandwidth. – user202729 Jul 27 '22 at 00:14
  • Thank you for the info. I was surprised by the nearly 5GB download size for MacTex. Python is 20MB afterall. Is there a reason the file is so larger? I had envisioned having a compiler and packages and simply typing pdflatex filename.tex into terminal and that's all. – user19604250 Jul 27 '22 at 00:18
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    The tex distribution is very comprehensive and there are 4000+ packages for a full installation. The compiler itself is not that large. If you do care about the size, you may not install a full texlive. Plus, the size is mainly the document and source. So if you do not need them (for example, documentation online is very accessible), TinyTeX may be a good choice. – Teddy van Jerry Jul 27 '22 at 04:08
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    Unless you do have size constraints, I'd suggest going with TeX Live. You'll have everything installed cleanly so you won't waste time afterwards hunting the packages you need. And MikTeX "auto install packages on the fly" feature is a bit unreliable anyway. – Miyase Jul 27 '22 at 08:13

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