Latex Setup - 19 Oct 20

Recently ('bout 2 years tbh) I started writing my uni notes in latex, to make the process a little more 2020-like I decided to use Gitlab CI/CD.
This allows me to have my .tex file compiled whenever I push to my repo (if you push PDFs in you repo you are an horrible person, if you use github releases manually it's ok but you're not my bear-friend).

Enough talking, let's get down to business.

Here are three different container images:

• registry.gitlab.com/rcastellotti/latex

  FROM ubuntu:groovy
  LABEL maintainer="rcastellotti.dev"
  
  RUN ln -snf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Rome /etc/localtime && echo $TZ > /etc/timezone
  
  RUN  apt update \
      && apt install -qy texlive texlive-xetex latexmk \
      && apt install -qy python3 python3-pygments curl git
  

• registry.gitlab.com/rcastellotti/latex:full (huge and probably not needed)

  FROM ubuntu:latest
  
  LABEL maintainer="rcastellotti.dev"
  
  RUN ln -snf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Rome /etc/localtime && echo $TZ > /etc/timezone
  RUN apt-get update \
      && apt-get install -qy texlive-full \
      && apt-get install -qy python3 python3-pip \
      && pip3 install pygments
  

• registry.gitlab.com/rcastellotti/latex:minimal (texlive-base + xelatex)

  FROM ubuntu:latest
  
  LABEL maintainer="rcastellotti.dev"
  
  RUN apt update && apt install -qy curl libgetopt-long-descriptive-perl libfontconfig git
  
  COPY texlive.profile /
  ENV PATH=/usr/local/texlive/2020/bin/x86_64-linux:$PATH
  RUN curl -O https://ctan.mirror.garr.it/mirrors/ctan/systems/texlive/tlnet/install-tl-unx.tar.gz
  RUN tar -xzf install-tl-unx.tar.gz 
  RUN mv install-tl-20* install-tl
  RUN cd install-tl && perl install-tl -profile /texlive.profile
  RUN tlmgr install xetex latexmk
  

Remember that texlive-* contains tlmgr so if a package is used only once it can just be installed adding tlmgr install <pkgname> in .gitlab-ci.yml

Speaking of .gitlab-ci.yml this is what I usually use.

compile_pdf:
    stage: build
    image: registry.gitlab.com/rcastellotti/latex
    script: 
        - git checkout master
        - curl -LOk https://github.com/JetBrains/JetBrainsMono/raw/master/fonts/ttf/JetBrainsMono-Regular.ttf
        - curl -O https://gitlab.com/rcastellotti/latex/-/raw/master/gitinfo.sh    
        - ./gitinfo.sh
        - latexmk -xelatex --shell-escape <file>.tex
    artifacts:
        paths: 
        - <file>.pdf

gitinfo.sh is a script to use gitinfo2 in manual mode, here you can find a raw version easy to curl.

You can check GitLab Docs to know where to find your compiled pdf.
Keeeping your repo private might be a good idea, if you want to have pdfs accessible by anyone I highly suggest to deploy your pdf using GitLab Pages adding the following to .gitlab-ci.yml.

pages:
    stage: deploy
    script:
        - mkdir public  
        - cp <file>.pdf public  
    artifacts:
        paths: 
        - public

On my machine I install texlive-full python3-pygments and I use VSCode +LaTex Workshop with this config :

{
    "latex-workshop.latex.tools": [
        {
        "name": "latexmk",
        "command": "latexmk",
        "args": [
            "-xelatex",
            "--shell-escape",
            "-synctex=1",
            "-interaction=nonstopmode",
            "-file-line-error",
            "%DOC%"
        ]
        }
    ],
    "[latex]": {
        "editor.rulers": [150],
        "editor.wordWrap": "wordWrapColumn",
        "editor.wrappingIndent": "same",
        "editor.wordWrapColumn": 150
    }
}

You can find a bunch of useful files in this repo (also contains container images), if you need help and have a bunch of bear pics feel free to contact me.