[Tex/LaTex] How to properly resolve relative paths in `\usepackage`

external filespaths

I have a dedicated directory for my project; within that are nested directories source/, output/ and styles/ that contain the .tex, .pdf and .sty files.

I was surprised to find that while \usepackage{../styles/mystyle} from source/main.tex did work as expected, I have to use the same path in the incantation from within styles/mystyle.sty, not \usepackage{./substyle}.

In other words, relative paths in a file included with \usepackage would appear to be resolved with respect to the including file, not the included one.

This seems problematic since it couples sources and styles—and indeed, moving the source to, say, /tmp/main.tex breaks the document! this is, to say the least, surprising.

Am I doing something wrong? is there a package that allows me to do the equivalent of a \usepackage with a path that is resolved relative to the including file?

I know I could probably set up environment variables and/or edit some TeX configuration file, but I'd prefer not to in order to keep everything working with a standard TeXlive/MacTex installation.

Best Answer

The argument of \usepackage is a name not a file path. The fact that it sometimes works at all when passed a relative file path is just due to lack of error checking by the system. If the package does declare itself using \ProvidesPackage the use of such paths will generate a warning that the name is incorrect.

The fact that the primitve \input works relative to the initial file rather than maintain a notion of current file and input relative to the current file at that point in the document is just the way it is. It can't easily be changed from the macro layer of latex.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] relative paths don’t work without absolute path

Note you should not include the .tex extension when using \include Unlike \input using .tex is not the same as using the default, it will find the same tex file but generate a different aux file one.tex.aux (if the file system allows that) rather than one.aux.

It normally works best to just use local file names rather than paths.

Just have

\include{one}
\include{two}

then use a command line of

TEXINPUTS=/path/to//: pdftex main

(or equivalent in other command lines, the above works in bash)

Setting TEXINPUTS as above sets the TeX input path to be /path/to and all its sub-directories (the trailing // and then the standard search path (because of the final :) then main on the command line finds /path/to/main.tex, \include{one} finds /path/to/main/one/one.tex and , \include{two} finds /path/to/main/two/two.tex irrespective of the current directory in which the command is run.

[Tex/LaTex] epslatex: relative path issue

Directory structure

Assume the following directory structure

main.tex
figures/
-- results1/
-- -- figure.gnuplot

File contents

The two document files yield the following content

figure.gnuplot:

#!/usr/bin/env gnuplot

set term epslatex color
set output '/tmp/temp.tex'

# BEGIN plotting commands
plot sin(x)
# END plotting commands

set output # Closes the temporary output files.
!sed 's|includegraphics{/tmp/temp}|includegraphics{figures/results1/figure}|' < /tmp/temp.tex > figure.tex
!epstopdf /tmp/temp.eps --outfile='figure.pdf'

main.tex:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document}

\input{figures/results1/figure.tex}

\end{document}

Instructions to reproduce

Go to the directory figures/results1/ and execute

gnuplot figure.gnuplot

Two files will appear: figure.tex and figure.pdf.

Now go back to the root folder of your document (where main.tex is) and compile main.tex using any engine, that can handle PDF files (not latex, but pdflatex, xelatex or lualatex).

DONE!

Remarks

Using this method you get a PDF file of your figure instead of an EPS, which needs to be converted to PDF.

On the other hand, you need to change all the filenames (maybe directories as well) for every new plot.