File not found

[ChrisLane]

Using Tectonic 0.1.8 on Arch Linux

After a long wait for the downloads on first run, I discovered that Tectonic is unable to build from my directory structure here.

I'm running the command tectonic cv/cv.tex from the root of that project and then being given the error:

Running TeX ...
error: something bad happened inside TeX; its output follows:

===============================================================================
(cv.tex
LaTeX2e <2016/03/31>
Babel <3.9r> and hyphenation patterns for 83 language(s) loaded.

! LaTeX Error: File `awesome-cv.cls' not found.

Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed,
or enter new name. (Default extension: cls)

Enter file name: ===============================================================================

error: the TeX engine had an unrecoverable error
caused by: terminal input forbidden

[rekka]

Thanks for reporting.

This happens because tectonic searches for missing files (awesome-cv.cls in this case) in the same directory as your tex file, which is located in the cv/ subdirectory. You can solve this by moving file cv.tex and directory tex to the root of your repo.

However, the package fontawesome5 is still missing. You can try to download it from https://ctan.org/pkg/fontawesome5 and unzip the files into the root of your repo so that tectonic can find them.

[ChrisLane]

For reasons of compatibility with other systems such as latexmk, I would have thought that it would be a good idea to have it use files in the PWD instead. Otherwise, I'll have to symlink that file into both cv and coverletter directories.

…

On 28 Aug 2018, 06:03, at 06:03, Norbert Pozar ***@***.***> wrote: Thanks for reporting. This happens because tectonic searches for missing files (`awesome-cv.cls` in this case) in the same directory as your tex file, which is located in the `cv/` subdirectory. You can solve this by moving file `cv.tex` and directory `tex` to the root of your repo. However, the package `fontawesome5` is still missing. You can try to download it from <https://ctan.org/pkg/fontawesome5> and unzip the files into the root of your repo so that tectonic can find them. -- You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: #221 (comment)

[rekka]

If I recall correctly, one of the arguments for the current behavior was reproducibility of builds. They should not depend on PWD. It's one of the things I like about tectonic's choices. But I understand your use case. Having to symlink/copy the common files so that the project can be split into subdirectories shouldn't be necessary. Maybe @pkgw has some thoughts on this.

[pkgw]

Sorry, all of my Tectonic cycles have been devoted to trying to get this thing building and working on Windows ... which IMO is awful to develop on, by the way!

Anyway, yes, I guess my basic vision is that Tectonic is a compiler that will work best if it is relatively strict at its lowest levels, which I'd call a change in attitude from existing La/TeX systems. This strictness includes things like being restrictive about paths in which resource files are searched for.

More broadly, compatiblity with tools like latexmk is explicitly a non-goal of Tectonic. On the other hand, there is immensely value in continuity with existing tooling. You could imagine Tectonic having an alternative frontend that aimed for much more compatibility with existing tools, in terms of both command-line arguments as well as things like file search semantics.

[Neved4]

Hey @ChrisLane, thank you for reporting this ❤️ I both use tectonic and latexmk and doing projects that use both can be tricky. Basically you'll have to manage your paths differently. In TeX Live you have the TEXINPUTS environmental variable, and in tectonic support was added for search paths recently #814

My way of doing things is to indicate latexmk, cluttex or the tool of choice a particular configuration (latexmk has .latemkrc for example) and to indicate tectonic a different one, so I can work with the same set of files in both. It's not perfect but different build systems required workarounds. I suggest you exploring the new -Z search-path option because it truly rocks 🚀

Can you give it a go, tell us what happens and see if we can safely close this?

[ChrisLane]

Thanks @ralismark for implementing this and @mnrvwl for notifying me.
I can confirm that my files do at least compile now with tectonic cv/cv.tex -Z search-path=.