LaTeX Automation Script

A Linux shell script for automating the multi-step compilation process required for complex LaTeX documents (like the Tufte-style book example provided). A Perl script version is also provided for testing or systems that compile via .pl only.

🚀 Overview

Compiling LaTeX documents often requires multiple passes of pdflatex, bibtex, and makeindex to correctly resolve:

• Bibliographies and citations.
• Table of Contents, List of Figures, and List of Tables.
• Cross-references and stable page numbering.
• Indices.

The compile_latex.sh script automates these 5 steps in one go, using "non-stop mode" to ensure the process doesn't hang on minor warnings or formatting errors.

🛠️ Requirements

• Linux environment (Ubuntu/Debian recommended).
• TeX Live or a similar LaTeX distribution installed.
• pdflatex, bibtex, and makeindex available in your PATH.

📖 How to Use from command line

1. Grant Execution Permissions (if not already set):

   chmod +x compile_latex.sh

2. Run the script with your .tex file as the argument. You can use the Bash or Perl version:

   # Bash version
   ./compile_latex.sh hello.tex
   
   # Perl version
   ./compile_latex.pl hello.tex

3. Result: The script will:

   • cd into the file's directory (bypassing LaTeX security restrictions on absolute paths).
   • Attempt to compile the document 5 times to resolve all dependencies.
   • Enable -shell-escape for advanced features.
   • Automatically open the resulting PDF.

📁 Included Example

The repository includes hello.tex, a comprehensive Tufte-Style book template that utilizes several advanced LaTeX features including:

• tufte-book document class.
• Citations and bibliography entries.
• Complex indices and cross-references.
• Margin figures and full-width environments.

--

🛠️ Additional Perl Script: compile_latex.pl

This script provides the same 5-pass compilation logic as the shell script but is written entirely in Perl in a non-bash environment

• Key Feature: Uses Perl's Cwd and File::Basename modules for platform-independent path handling.
• Intelligence: Parses the .aux file to check for citations and detects the .idx file before running the auxiliary tools.
• Security Bypass: Just like the Bash version, it switches directories automatically to ensure TeX Live can write its output files correctly.

_ Ex: _ How to use the Perl script/utility:

1 /home/ericbooth/Documents/compile_latex.pl /home/ericbooth/Documents/hello.tex

👤 Author

Eric A. Booth

• 🏛️ Sr Researcher, Texas 2036
• 📧 eric.a.booth@gmail.com
• 🌐 www.eric-booth.com
• 💼 GitHub Profile