VS code LaTeX template project

These repo is meant to be used with vscode to provide an quick and funktional full fleece LeTeX Environment. Images are here.

Functions

With this image you can:

Quickly setup a clean, working LaTeX environment (TexLive)
Use pandoc to convert your projects(not in images with the slim attribute)
Use any host OS
Have our environment on a remote computer
Have a setup that is faster than MiKTeX on Windows
Have LaTeX Workshop an LaTex Utilities preinstalled (VSCode only)
Markdown support (VSCode only)
Persistent bash_history (VSCode only)
Git support
Customize your image with own users or more tools
Scientific project template (VSCode only)

Getting started

In a container

The entire project is within the container

# In VSCode hit F1
> Remote-Containers: Clone Repository in Container Volume
> https://github.com/hegerdes/VSCode-LaTeX-Container
# Wait for the initial pull and build
# Note: You need to have docker and vscode remote extentions installed

Local setup

The TeX source is on your host OS and gets mounted as volume

git clone https://github.com/hegerdes/VSCode-LaTeX-Container
code VSCode-LaTeX-Container
# In VSCode hit F1
> Remote-Containers: Reopen in Container
# Wait for the initial pull and build
# Note: You need to have docker and vscode remote extentions installed

About the image and tags

There are four base images debian-[buster|stretch], ubuntu-[focal|bionic]. All these images have texlive, texlive-latex-extra texlive-lang-english, texlive-luatex, texlive-xetex, texlive-pstricks, texlive-science, latexmk, cm-super, chktex with additional tools like git, zsh, python3 and pandoc installed.

The slim images only contain texlive, texlive-latex-extra, texlive-lang-english, latexmk, cm-super, chktex

There are two full images that contain everything in the LaTeX world except for docs. Thes are BIG and generally not recommended.

There are a bunch of language specific images that are build up on the buster-base and focal-base images. Languages are: all, arabic, chinese, cjk, cyrillic, czechslovak, english, european, french, german, greek, italian, japanese, korean, other, polish, portuguese, spanish.

Use one of these if your work on a non English project! Simply change the VARIANT arg in the devcontainer.json to buster-lang-<YOUR_LANGUAGE>.

The LaTeX template

The template was build up over the time and is designed for satisfice projects. But I didn't start form scratch either. Credit goes to:

% Original author:
% WikiBooks (LaTeX - Title Creation) with modifications by:
% Vel (vel@latextemplates.com)
% hegerdes (hegerdes@uni-osnabrueck.de)

VSCode workspace

I added a vscode workspace file with sensible setting. Customize it after your own taste.

Why

I always liked the concept of LaTeX and its focus on content instead of the formatting. But getting started was hard. I first used MiKTeX and TeXworks, but I found the usage of shortcuts hard and didn't like the PDF viewer. I switched t Notepad++, SumataPDF and a handy script. It was great till my projects got bigger. So I used VSCode and LaTeX Workshop and I loved it. All my shortcuts and tools I used before now applied to LaTeX. I was satisfied until I realized how slow MiKTeX on windows is compared to Linux.

I love Linux but some things are more convenient on Windows. I started my Bachelor theses about development environments and the usage of container tools. So I have further developed my setup to bring everything together.

I found that the tianon/latex and other image were outdated and did not meet my expectations. I rather created my own image. It is own the large side but I rather have all my tools there at any time instead of being slowed down by missing them or have to install packages manually. I hope some of you find some interesting tips and tricks in my setup.

If you find any issues let me know

Tips & Tricks

If you use git. Checkout everything with lf line endings

* text=auto eol=lf
*.{cmd,[cC][mM][dD]} text eol=crlf
*.{bat,[bB][aA][tT]} text eol=crlf

On Windows use the WSL2 backend
You can customize your environment by changing the image in the .devcontainer folder
You can add own users by changing the USERNAME and remoteUser in the devcontainer.json
Check out the template with:

# In VSCode hit F1
> Remote-Containers: Clone Repository in Container Volume
> https://github.com/hegerdes/VSCode-LaTeX-Container

Support me

If you like this or other projects may consider supporting me.

HasanDoha/VSCode-LaTeX-Container