INSTALLING latexmk ================== (Version 4.76, 20 Nov. 2021) John Collins Physics Department Penn State University 104 Davey Lab, Box 208 University Park PA 16802 U.S.A. http://www.personal.psu.edu/jcc8/ http://www.personal.psu.edu/jcc8/latexmk/ username jcc8 at node psu.edu Latexmk is a "make" tool for building latex documents. It runs latex and/or pdflatex the appropriate number of times to resolve cross references etc, and, if necessary, it also runs makeindex and/or bibtex (or biber) and other programs when appropriate. Then it can make postscript or pdf files, print the result or preview it, as requested. It can also be set to run continuously with a previewer; the latex program, etc, are then rerun whenever one of the source files is modified. Latexmk automatically determines file dependencies from the LaTeX .log and .fls files. Latexmk can be installed and used on UNIX (including LINUX and OS-X), and MS Windows (tested under WinXP and some later versions). It can presumably be used on other systems with suitable customization. On all systems, the prequisites are a. A working installation of Perl. (See http://www.cpan.org/ if you don't have one. Modern UNIX-like systems, particularly linux and OS-X, often have perl installed by default. As for MSWindows, the TeXLive distribution (2009 or later) includes Perl, and in the default configuration also includes latexmk.) b. A working installation of TeX and LaTeX. (See http://www.ctan.org/ if you don't have one.) c. In addition, the installation of TeX and LaTex should, of course, contain the packages etc that are needed for your specific documents to be compiled and processed. !!!! IMPORTANT NOTE: !!!! =========================== If you have installed a modern distribution of TeX and friends, you may find that latexmk is already installed on your computer. This is true for full installations of TeXLive 2009 or later on the operating systems it supports. (Note that MacTeX on OS-X incorporates TeXLive, so anything said about TeXLive also applies to MacTeX.) If you have only installed a subset of packages, e.g., because you installed BasicTeX, then the subset may not include latexmk; in that case you should be able to use your distribution's package manager to install latexmk. This is generally the recommended method; only use the manual installation method below if you have a special need for it. However, you should still examine the information on configuration here and in the main documentation to get latexmk working exactly as you want it. You can test whether latexmk is already properly installed by trying the command "latexmk -v" from the command line. If this succeeds, then latexmk is already installed. Otherwise, if you are using TeXLive or MacTeX, then you can simply use its package manager to get latexmk installed, the same as for any other missing package. If you are on MS-Windows and you are using TeXLive (2009, or later), this distribution also includes a distribution of Perl sufficient to run latexmk.pl, so you don't need to install Perl separately. It also includes an executable file latexmk.exe that runs latexmk. In the case of MiKTeX, the other standard distribution for MS-Windows, the main difference from TeXLive as regards latexmk is that you may need to install a distribution of Perl. A standard default installation of Perl should enable latexmk to work. BUT, you may need to configure latexmk to **Manual** installation on UNIX/LINUX/OS-X ========================================== (Power users can modify these as appropriate, of course.) NOTE: If you are using TeXLive 2009 or later, you can install latexmk simply by using the TeXLive package manager (that includes users of MacTeX). In fact, depending on how much of TeXLive you have already installed, latexmk may already have been installed. In that case you don't normally need to bother with the manual installation explained below. Still you may need to examine the configuration instructions see item 6. 1. Make sure you have working installations of Perl and TeX/LaTeX. 2. Put the file latexmk.pl in a directory for executable files. For example, for a system-wide installation, you could put it in /usr/local/bin. But if you are an ordinary user, you can put the file somewhere where you have access, and ensure that the PATH environment variable includes the directory where latexmk is installed. 3. Rename this file to latexmk. 4. Make sure latexmk is executable, e.g., by using chmod suitably. [Special case, which you probably don't have to be concerned with: You **may** also find it necessary to change the first line of the script so that perl can be found to execute latexmk. Currently the first line is #!/usr/bin/env perl, which uses the program /usr/bin/env to find perl, provided only that the perl executable can be found in the PATH for executables. This insulates latexmk from the fact that the Perl executable has a system-dependent location. The program /usr/bin/env is present on almost all modern UNIX-type systems, including linux and macOS.] 5. (Optional) Copy the file latexmk.1 to an appropriate directory for man pages, e.g., /usr/local/man/man1/. Alternatively, or in addition, put the file latexmk.pdf in a suitable place for pdf files for documentation. 6. Check whether the commands used by latexmk for executing latex etc are correct or need changes. See below for how to do this in a configuration file, and the documentation for further information. The commands you particularly have to worry about are those for previewing files (set by the variables $pdf_previewer, $ps_previewer, and $dvi_previwer), and most importantly $pscmd, and its associated variable $pid_position --- see below. The command $pscmd is the least obvious: it runs the command ps and is used in preview_continuous_mode to determine whether a previewer is already running. The format of the output of ps is highly system dependent. Latexmk should get it right under LINUX and macOS. To know what the current settings are, run latexmk --commands from the command line. If latexmk does not get one of more of these commands correct, put an override in a startup file: a. For a system-wide installation, the correction should be in the system startup file, which on a UNIX-like operating system is any one of /opt/local/share/latexmk/LatexMk, /usr/local/share/latexmk/LatexMk, /usr/local/lib/latexmk/LatexMk, /opt/local/share/latexmk/latexmkrc, /usr/local/share/latexmk/latexmkrc, /usr/local/lib/latexmk/latexmkrc. (You get to choose which, but only one. If none of these directories is appropriate you'll need to modify latexmk.pl.) Those directories apply to Unix-like operating systems (including linux and macOS). On MS-Windows, the system start-up file is one of C:\latexmk\LatexMk C:\latexmk\latexmkrc (If you happen to use Cygwin, latexmk combines both the MS-Windows and the Unix possibilities.) b. If you are installing latexmk as an ordinary user, the startup file is the user startup file, which is the file .latexmkrc in your home directory. (Under normal circumstances, latexmk's definition of home directory under Unix-like operating systems is the usual one, i.e., the value in the environment variable HOME. Under MS-Windows, a user's home directory is normally the directory of the user profile, as given in the environment variable USERPROFILE. In general, latexmk takes a user's home directory to be the directory specified in the first of the environment variables HOME and USERPROFILE that is non-empty.) The startup files are written in Perl, so possible overrides are like $latex = 'unusual_program_to_run_instead_of_normal_latex %O %S'; for changing the program to run latex, and $pscmd = 'ps -aeg'; $pid_position = 1; for the ps command. Here, $pid_position = 1 indicates that the process ID number is in the first column of the output of the command ps. See the latexmk documentation for more details. 7. If you need any modifications on the commands for running previewers, like gv, note that prefixing a command by start, as in $ps_previewer = 'start gv -watch %O %S'; ensures that the command is run detached, as is normally appropriate for a previewer. (In the examples above, there appear the strings %O and %S. See the documenation for details. They are placeholders used when latexmk constructs the command line. %O denotes any options latexmk wants to add to the command invocation, and %S denotes the source file.) 8. You may also want to change the defaults on what kinds of output file latexmk makes. By default latexmk makes dvi files, but not postscript or pdf files. If you (or people on your system) generally make pdf files using pdflatex, it would be a good idea to put the following in an appropriate initialization file: $pdf_mode = 1; $postscript_mode = 0; $dvi_mode = 0; See step 6 for the locations of the initialization/configuration files where you should put these lines. **Manual** Installation on MS-Windows ===================================== (Power users can modify these as appropriate.) NOTE: If you are using TeXLive 2009 or later, you can install latexmk simply by using the TeXLive package manager. In fact, depending on how much of TeXLive you have already installed, latexmk may already have been installed. In that case you don't normally need to bother with the manual installation explained below. Similarly if you have MiKTeX, you can install latexmk by using MiKTeX's package manager. But to allow latexmk to work, you will also need to install a distribution of Perl if you haven't done so already. 1. Make sure you have working installations of Perl and TeX/LaTeX, complete with viewers for dvi, postscript and/or pdf files. You will also need whatever packages your document needs. 2. If necessary, unpack the latexmk distribution. 3. **Difference compared with UNIX-type systems**: Copy the file latexmk.pl to a suitable directory (your choice), and arrange for it to be invoked as a command. (If you don't know how to do this, find out about "executable extension for perl on windows", by a web search.) 4. If the directory in the previous step is NOT already in the search path for executable files, arrange for this, by adjusting the environment variable PATH suitably. In Windows, there is a Control Panel setting for this. (Should be under Advanced system settings->Environment variables.) 5. (Optional) Copy documentation file(s) to a suitable directory. The only requirement on the directory is your convenience: some convenient place to look up documentation. The relevant files are latexmk.txt which is a pure ASCII text file, and latexmk.pdf which is a postscript file. 6. You may need to reboot, or at least logoff and log back in, if you made any changes to PATH. 7. Test out the installation at the command-line prompt: a. First do latexmk --version This should show you the version number of latexmk. If this works latexmk is accessible. If not, you will have to figure out what did not work in the previous steps. b. Then change to a directory where you have a good LaTeX file. Suppose the file is paper.tex. Delete any pre-existing dvi file, so that latexmk is forced to remake the output files. The following commands will check out the main features of latexmk: latexmk paper latexmk -pv paper latexmk -pv -ps paper The first command will create the dvi file, running latex a suitable number of times, and additionally running bibtex and makeindex, but only if needed. The second command will open a viewer of the dvi file. The third command will create a postscript file, and then open a viewer for it. c. If the above works, you are done. If not, you will have to figure out what is wrong, and correct it. FIRST, READ THE DOCUMENTATION! The normal problems are that the names for the commands used by latexmk are incorrect for your system, or they are not present on your system. See the next item for how to customize latexmk. Also LOOK AT THE SECTION NAMED "TRICKY POINTS" below to see some hints. 8. If the commands used by latexmk are incorrect, see the UNIX installation instructions for what to do. The only changes needed from the UNIX instructions are: a. The system initialization file is C:\latexmk\LatexMk. (If this is not suitable for some reason, you'll need to change the latexmk.pl file where this filename appears.) b. The user initialization file is .latexmkrc in the directory specified by the environment variable HOME. If there is no HOME variable, then the file is in the directory specified by the environment variable USERPROFILE, which should have been set by the MS-Windows operating system at login. Other systems ============= For other systems you are on your own. The instructions for UNIX/LINUX and MS-Windows should help you to see what to do. Let me know (username jcc8 at node psu.edu) what happens, so that I can update these instructions and possibly latexmk as well. Tricky points ============= 1. BEWARE of filenames with double extensions, for example, two.part.tex. The behavior of TeX-related software is not consistent in this situation. You may, for example, find a log file named two.log or two.part.log, depending on which version of which implementation of TeX/LaTeX you use. Naturally, there is a possibility in this situation that latexmk will get confused, and not recognize, for example, that a dvi file has been generated. Latexmk has configuration variables to deal with some of the possibilities, so you could try playing with them --- see the code. But it general, it is best to avoid such double extensions: they make your files non-portable. Do something like two-part.tex or two_part.tex instead. 2. The same goes for filenames and directory names with spaces in them. Much software tends to interpret spaces as separators between different filenames or between filenames and other text. This can cause problems in some of the programs called by latexmk. It can also cause problems when latexmk parses a .log file to determine dependency information. Latexmk does try to correctly treat filenames with spaces, as do current implementations of the TeX program. 3. Beware also of files and directories whose names contain non-ASCII characters. There are some tricky problems because of mismatches between character codings as used by different software and operating systems. Latexmk tries to do its best, but problems can arise. Often things work without trouble. 4. If you need to remake documentation files, e.g., latexmk.pdf or latexmk.txt, from the man page file latexmk.1, the following commands work (on my linux and OS-X systems at least): Postscript file from latexmk.1: groff -Tps -man-old -rcR=0 latexmk.1 > latexmk.ps Pdf file from postscript: ps2pdf latexmk.ps latexmk.pdf Text file: groff -Tascii -man-old -rcR=0 latexmk.1 > latexmk.txt Credits ======= The original version of this program was called 'go', and written by David Musliner. That version is Copyright 1992 by David J. Musliner and The University of Michigan. Version 2 was modified by Evan McLean. The current version is by John Collins (username jcc8 at node psu.edu) -- other contact details at the top. It is copyright 1998-2019 by John Collins, and the previous authors; see the copyright notice in the latexmk.pl file, which gives permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation under the terms of the GNU Public License v. 2.