Latex can’t find .sty with TEXINPUT exported

macpathstexinputs

My LaTeX document starts with this: \RequirePackage{mymacros}

mymacros.sty is located in a completely different dir. Following this guide which says I should export TEXINPUTS, I've added this line to my .bashrc:

export TEXINPUT=.:/Users/myname/Documents/GitHub/latex-styles/:$TEXINPUTS

i.e. where mymacros.sty is located.

Then I run latex myfile.tex, but I get ! LaTeX Error: File 'mymacros.sty' not found.

I don't want to store the .sty file adjacent to the LaTeX file, because I want multiple files in different dirs to be able to use the .sty file.

I've tried changing the singular TEXINPUT to TEXINPUTS in case that was the problem, but that resulted in the same error.

I'm running MacOS and my LaTex version is shown here:
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.21 (TeX Live 2020) (preloaded format=latex)

Best Answer

On MacOS, the simplest approach is to put the files in ~/Library/texmf/tex or its subdirectories. If for whatever reason you want to keep the files elsewhere, what I do is I open a terminal window, go to ~/Library/texmf/tex (creating the directories if necessary) then

ln -s path/to/other/input/directory

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Custom .sty directory with OSX 10.5 and pdfTeXk

Solution 1: Install MacTeX

If your Mac users install the full MacTeX distribution, then the chances of a package being missing are very minimal, assuming you are using packages that are standardly part of MikTeX. TeXLive does require packages to be in a strict hierarchy unless they are located in the same folder as the source document. There are ways to do what you want, but before exploring them it would be simpler to have the right Mac distribution in place and see if the problem goes away.

Solution 2: Add an extra texmf directory.

It's not hard to add an extra local texmf directory. See How to add an extra searchable dir with personal style files to TeXLive, NOT under ~/Library/texmf? (the second part of the answer).

Note that TeXLive is very strict about the structure of the texmf directory, so LaTeX packages must be in the tex/latex directory. See How to have local package overide default package for details of the structure of the texmf directory.

Solution 3: Make a symbolic link to the extra directory

There is one other way to implement this. On a Mac, local additions are usually expected to be in ~/Library/texmf, which should have the directory structure outlined in the linked question above. Instead of adding an extra local texmf directory and giving your style directory that structure, you could simply put a symbolic link to your style directory in ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex. This way any style/class files will be found as if they were in the right part of the local texmf folder.

[Tex/LaTex] can’t find tfm sometimes

I had a long command line for pdflatex anyways, so I stored the font files in a subdirectory named garamond and 'solved' it with a bash script:

#!/bin/bash

FOO=`ls garamond`
cp garamond/* .

# pdflatex command here...

rm -f $FOO

I have no idea what model TeX is using for paths, but it doesn't match modern hypertext systems and I can't find any documentation of it, so it requires ridiculous workarounds.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Custom .sty directory with OSX 10.5 and pdfTeXk

[Tex/LaTex] can’t find tfm sometimes

Related Question