LaTeX: Makefile
Posted by: nico on 
Jul 2nd, 2009 | 
Filed under: LaTeX
Remember I said that being a programmer would make you a lot more comfortable around LaTeX? The reason is quite simple, tex is just source code for a document. As with any source code in Linux (Windows too, but that is besides the point) you can use a Makefile to compile it and make your life easier.
I have already posted this Makefile in another entry but it’s time to explain how it works.
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all: main.pdf
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main.pdf: code_frames *.tex
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pdflatex main.tex && pdflatex main.tex
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.PHONY: run clean edit
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edit:
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gvim -S vim.sess
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run: main.pdf
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evince main.pdf &
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clean:
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@# for each .tex file, remove the extension
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@# and delete its generated files
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@for PART in $(shell ls *.tex| sed ‘s:.tex::g’); do
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echo "*.out *.nav *.aux *.toc *.log *.snm *.pdf *.vrb" |
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sed "s:*:$$PART:g" | xargs rm -f;
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done
It’s rather easy, let’s check it target by target:
- all: create the main document – used as default target
- main.pdf: document’s target – no need to call it main.pdf, I just do it because the entry point in C programs is called “main” so I’m used to it. Also, it looks better than foo.pdf. As a side note, it runs twice “pdflatex” because it first creates the document and the second time updates the document’s index.
- edit: I usually have a single document split in many files, so keeping a line to quickly open up your editor with all this files is handy. I just keep it as a Vim session, no need for more
- run: target to open up the document in a pdf viewer. I call it run so I can use it with my default mapping in Vim
- clean: clean up the files created while compiling a document. Some times it’s needed if there’s an error you can track – it may be a corrupted .aux file
Short entry this time – next: using source code from within LaTeX.
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