[Tex/LaTex] ny way to build a LaTeX document from a parent directory

compilingfoldersmakefile

I've written a makefile for my current project which produces all deliverables (executable, written in C, and report, written in LaTeX). I have a directory structure whereby the Makefile and outputs (pdf and executable) sit in the parent directory, and source code sits in a Code/ directory, and the LaTeX sits in a /Report directory, similar to:

Directory Structure Diagram

At present the Makefile (in the Project directory) has to cd into the Report directory before running LaTeX, a bit like the following:

Report: $(CODEFILES) $(TEXFILES) Report/Build
    cd Report/;         $(TEX) $(TEXARGS) Report.tex

Is there any way to tell LaTeX run as if it were in another directory, or have I done this in the best possible way? It just seems a bit of a fudge, and I'm always keen to learn of cleaner solutions!

Thanks.

Edited to update diagram, and to mention that the real problem is because Report.tex includes subfiles, preventing me from doing latex Report/Report.tex

Best Answer

(Added comment as answer)

There is nothing wrong with changing the directory (most Makefiles do this), but you should always use cd ... && ..., otherwise you run into trouble if the cd fails. To place the ouput files somewhere else, use the --output-directory command line option.

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[Tex/LaTex] ny way to do a correct word count of a LaTeX document

This is in the UK TeX FAQ. The solutions suggested are:

detex filename (which tries to strip LaTeX commands), then use any word count tool. (e.g. wc)
latexcount.pl, a Perl script for word count
texcount, another script even has an online interface
wordcount, which has a script that runs LaTeX with some settings, then counts word indications in the log file.

[Tex/LaTex] ny way to get real-time compilation for LaTeX

On a Mac, you can of course just open up a terminal, cd to the directory where you keep the TeX file, and issue

while true; do sleep 5; latex -halt-on-error filename.tex; done

and have the DVI file open in a viewer that watches for (and reloads on) changes. The one-liner runs latex continuously with 5 second break between runs (the -halt-on-error options prevents the incantation from getting stuck if you saved a file with errors). You can also swap in pdflatex instead.

This solves half of your problem. The other half has to be dealt with by your editor of choice. You need to set it up to automatically save the file every x seconds, and how to do that depends on the editor at hand.

Now, that one-liner I gave above is quite ugly and resource wasting, since it makes no sense to re-compile if no changes are made (Edit: See this comment below for a much better way to avoid this problem). So you can do something like

while true; do sleep 2; if [ filename.tex -nt filename.log ]; then latex -halt-on-error filename.tex; fi; done

which watches for changes to the TeX file (signaled by the fact that filename.tex is more recently modified than filename.log) and compile when necessary (with a possible two seconds delay).

Short of a WYSIWYG, I am not quite sure how you can achieve full real-time solution. Compiling the code takes usually a short amount of time (1 or 2 seconds, or more if the file is large). So if you are looking for a solution that calls the LaTeX compiler, it probably shouldn't try to do it more often than once every 5 or 10 seconds. So you won't be able to immediately see what you typed in the DVI window. Also, if the editor autosaves the file in a spot where you are halfway typing a command, then the source won't compile.

With LaTeX I feel that the better idea is "compile-on-saves", where the human initiates the saving of the file (as compared to "automatically saving and compiling in the background). For that, modern editors can generally support hot-keys where saving and compiling is mapped to one keystroke. In vim I map F2 to compile and F4 to call XDVI.

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[Tex/LaTex] ny way to do a correct word count of a LaTeX document

[Tex/LaTex] ny way to get real-time compilation for LaTeX

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