OUT OF DATE: ODU WS-DL Thesis/Dissertation LaTeX Template

Important: The template contained in this repository was last updated May 2018. The most recent template (approved by the College of Sciences in April 2024) is available at https://github.com/oduwsdl/odusci-etd-template

Summary

This is a ready to use ODU thesis/dissertation LaTeX template, both for Master and PhD, tailored to suit the needs of the WS-DL Research Group. The template is based on the Old Dominion University Guide for the Preparation of Theses and Dissertation This repository contains:

• a LaTeX class named, wsdlthesis
• a minimal bootstrap thesis with an opinionated directory structure and file naming convention
• a handful of useful macros
• a Makefile with common tasks and a Dockerfile to package necessary dependencies

Getting Started

Install necessary LaTeX distribution or use Docker. Then follow these steps:

$ git clone https://github.com/oduwsdl/wsdlthesis.git YOUR_THESIS_NAME
$ cd YOUR_THESIS_NAME
$ make

This should generate the main.pdf file in the working directory that has all the necessary skeleton of a PhD dissertation.

Basic Customization

Change the basic properties such as title and author in the config.tex file to make it your own. At the bottom of the config.tex file there are some configuration options that can be enabled/disabled as needed.

• \mastertrue - Uncomment this if a Master's thesis is desired (the default is PhD dissertation).
• \proposaltrue - Uncomment this for the candidacy proposal (the default is thesis/dissertation).
• \revisiontrue - Uncomment this to add the draft revision build date and time in the footer (the default is final formatting).

Alternatively, these attributes can be set by passing optional parameters to the documentclass[master,proposal,revision]{wsdlthesis} in the main.tex file. Any additional parameters to the wsdlthesis class will be passed on to the parent report class. We encourage to keep the main.tex file unchanged.

The Abstract, Preface, and Vita pages are placed under the ./pages folder. Modify corresponding ./pages/*.tex files to make them your own. Now, build again to make sure these changes are reflected in the main.pdf file.

$ make

Adding Chapters

The repository is preloaded with Introduction, Background, and Related Work chapters under the ./chapters folder. We use a specific naming convention for chapter files like 01_introduction.tex and 02_background.tex. Numeric prefix here makes it easy to include these files automatically in the desired order, while the chapter name helps to quickly open the desired file for modifications. Start with modifying the content of the existing chapters and add more chapter files with the same naming convention as necessary.

A similar file naming convention is used for the appendix chapters that are located under the ./appendices folder. The example file there uses an alphabetical prefix in the file name to match the chapter numbering in the document, but any naming scheme would work as long as files are sortable in the desired order.

Adding Bibliography

The ref.bib file is located in the root of the repository and referenced in the main.tex file. In most cases, adding more entries in the bib file, as needed, would be sufficient.

Adding Figures

A folder named ./figures is specified as a place to store the figures. Additionally, \graphicspath is set to this folder in the config.tex file so that figures can be added in the document just by using their names rather than a relative or absolute path.

Adding Listings

Code samples are a very common thing that appear in a CS thesis.

[TODO: We need to add a folder for external code samples, streamline the mechanism to add listings, include a list of listings after ToC in the class, and add some helper macros.]

Make Tasks

Task	Description
make	Make a clean build of the main.pdf
make build	Repeatedly build LaTeX and BibTeX to ensure references are correct
make clear	Remove all intermediate files
make clean	Remove all intermediate files and the main.pdf
make save	Save a timestamped copy of main.pdf under ./revisions folder

Using Docker

To avoid installing LaTeX and other dependencies on a host machine one can use official oduwsdl/wsdlthesis Docker image.

$ docker image pull oduwsdl/wsdlthesis

Alternatively, an image can be built locally as the repository includes a Dockerfile.

$ docker image build -t oduwsdl/wsdlthesis .

Note: This is a big image (>5GB) as it includes texlive-full package along with some other dependencies, hence, both pulling it from the DockerHub or building locally may take a significant amount of time and disk space.

Once the image is locally available, either by pulling from DockerHub or building locally, run the following command from the source directory to compile the code. By virtue of mounting current working directory inside the container at /src, build artifacts such as main.pdf will be available in the current directory.

$ docker container run --rm -it -v $PWD:/src oduwsdl/wsdlthesis

The default command in the image is set to make, which can be overridden to anything as illustrated below.

$ docker container run --rm -it -v $PWD:/src oduwsdl/wsdlthesis make save

To further simplify these long commands, the repository provides a wrapper Shell script runindocker.sh. The script also ensures that the container runs with the appropriate UID and GID to avoid any file permission issues in build artifacts. The above two commands can be executed using this script as illustrated below.

$ ./runindocker.sh
$ ./runindocker.sh make save

Macros

The repository comes with the custommacros.sty file that is included in the main.tex file. This is a good place to include all the necessary packages needed for your thesis. This files is preloaded with some helper macros, but add your own as necessary.

\todo

The \todo macro adds a red TODO note. This can be used with or without an argument. \todo adds a default note while \todo[Custom note] allows the note customization.

\inputAllFiles

The \inputAllFiles is a macro to add all *.tex files under the folder argument. This is being used in the main.tex file to automatically include all the chapters and appendices. This will only work on Unix-like machines, hence, Windows users should manually \input those files.