TexCreate by Mustafif Khan

This project is under the MIT License

TexCreate is a LaTeX Project creator that allows users to easily create projects using a configuration file that will define a template, project name, and metadata. Compared to version 2 which last saw an update 10 months ago, version 3 comes with the focus on template modularity and stability.

Template Modularity?

In previous versions the templates are in someway embedded in the programs code, such as in version 2 we saw that being done using texc_latex crate. However, this limited the amount of templates that could be available to users as they would have to wait for a minor update to see a template addition. So...how was this fixed? This was solved in 2 parts, first was by creating an opensource template generator texcgen (note: TexCreate templates are built with a fork mkproj_texcgen), and the second part is done in a web service texcweb. The ability to put a template into a JSON file using the handy texcore library I developed allows it to be easily downloaded in the latest releases and TexCreate is able to know about these updates because of texcweb.

If you are updating from an earlier beta (before Beta 9) to stable, please make sure to update to the latest template repo (currently v2). Due to the update of TexCore 0.6.0 from 0.4.17, earlier templates are broken. To update to the latest template use the command texcreate update.

How to get started?

Installing

Cargo Method

# make sure to have rust installed 
$ curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
# install via Cargo 
$ cargo install texcreate

Debian Method

# this method is only for Debian amd64 Linux systems
# will automatically install autocomplete 
$ curl --proto '=https' https://texcreate.mkproj.com/sh | sudo sh

Setting up Autocomplete

This example will show how to do auto complete for the bash shell:

$ apt-get install bash-completion -y
$ texcreate gen-complete --shell bash
$ mv texcreate.bash /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/

The new thing with TexCreate is that templates are locally stored in the directory $HOME/.texcreate where the structure looks like the following:

$HOME/.texcreate/
                # where MKProj first party templates are saved
                mkproj/
                # where custom generated templates are saved
                custom/

To setup this directory structure you will need to run the following command:

$ texcreate init 

To create a new config file, you will need to use the new command. The difference between v2 and v3 is the default use of texcreate.toml instead of config.toml and the ability to use different file names. Let's create a new project:

$ texcreate new 
Use default project settings? (yes/no)
no
Enter Project Name: 
name
Enter Template Repo: 
mkproj
Enter Template Name: 
basic
Enter config file name (default: texcreate.toml): 
myfirst.toml
Successfully created `myfirst.toml`

If we look at myfirst.toml we can see the following:

packages = []

[project]
proj_name = "name"
template = "basic"
repo = "mkproj"

[metadata]
author = "author"
date = "date"
title = "title"
fontsize = 11
doc_class = "article"
maketitle = true

Lastly to build the project use the build command:

# when using build, if name isn't `texcreate.toml`, use flag -f 
$ texcreate build -f myfirst.toml
Successfully created `name`

If we use ls in the project, we can see the following structure:

$ ls 
include  name.tex compiler.toml out

To compile we can use the compile command, do note you may change the LaTeX compiler used in the compiler.toml file. The default is pdflatex when a project is created.

# make sure to be in project root
$ texcreate compile 
$ ls out 
name.pdf 

Make sure to not change the proj_name field in compiler.toml or the command will not be able to compile.

Changes in Beta 2

• Added the compile command
  • Required creating the Compiler type and making changes to Project
• Added a -r/--repo flag to the list command
  • Allows to specify the mkproj or custom repo

Changes in Beta 3

• Added the texcgen command
  • Allows users to create/interact with texc_gen using texcreate

Changes in Beta 4

• Fixed the texcgen command
• Altered the update_alert() to show a prettier message

Changes in Beta 5

• Added the zip command
  • Allows users to create a zip file of a TexCreate project
• Added the open command
  • Opens texcreate.mkproj.com in their default browser
• Added the web command
  • Runs a web service to create TexCreate projects

Changes in Beta 6

• Updated to texcore 0.4.18
• Fixed breaking in 3.0.0-beta.5
• Fixed logging in web command
• Added papersize option to WebConfig because of update to texcore

Changes in Beta 7

• Optimizations towards the zip & build commands
• Refactored with clippy suggestions
• Added InvalidRepo error variant
• Fixed build command with not adding the packages field
• Fixed zip command with not changing metadata and adding the packages field
• Added global DIR variable to dir module to allow for lazily evaluated directory paths
• Added detailed comments to whole project

Changes in Beta 8

• Added mode & clean fields in the Compiler struct

Changes in Beta 9

• Updated to texcore 0.6.0
  • Introduces write_tex_files() that is asynchronous and will write files in parallel
• Replaced Compiler & CompilerMode with texc_v3_compiler_conf::*
• Replaced web module with texc_v3_web

Final Changes for Stable

• Added upgrade command to update TexCreate and templates.
• Added support for installing via Debian Package (currently only for amd64).
• Added support for autocomplete with the gen-complete command