These instructions will assist in creating a PDF document from a .tex LaTeX source code file using the command line interface. Alternative graphical LaTeX compilers are available, and are not covered in this tutorial.
This document assumes some basic proficiency in using the computers command line interface. It also assumes a previous (and proper) local installation of a LaTeX distribution. Suggested LaTeX distributions are TeXLive, MikTeX, and MacTeX. For other distributions of LaTeX, these instructions may need to be slightly modified: namely the name of the suggested LaTeX PDF-Generating Tool.
When you installed your LaTeX distribution, it likely came with numerous tools that were added to your system. Many of these tools were added for LaTeX to function properly, and many of these tools were added for the user to interact with LaTeX in various ways. Among these installed tools will likely be pdflatex and xelatex, 2 common tools used to generate PDFs with LaTeX.
In your command prompt, you can verify if these tools exist on your system by running pdflatex --help and xelatex --help.
$ pdflatex --help
Usage: pdftex [OPTION]... [TEXNAME[.tex]] [COMMANDS]
or: pdftex [OPTION]... \FIRST-LINE
or: pdftex [OPTION]... &FMT ARGS
Run pdfTeX on TEXNAME, usually creating TEXNAME.pdf.
Any remaining COMMANDS are processed as pdfTeX input, after TEXNAME is read.
...
$ xelatex --help
Usage: xetex [OPTION]... [TEXNAME[.tex]] [COMMANDS]
or: xetex [OPTION]... \FIRST-LINE
or: xetex [OPTION]... &FMT ARGS
Run XeTeX on TEXNAME, usually creating TEXNAME.pdf.
Any remaining COMMANDS are processed as XeTeX input, after TEXNAME is read.
...If your system was unable to find either of these commands, take a pause to check two things.
- Identify if alternative PDF LaTeX tools exist with your installed distribution of LaTeX
- A simple google search for "your latex distribution here pdf latex tools"
- Proceed with that alternative command in place of
xelatexwhich will be used.
- If your distribution of LaTeX was properly installed.
- Check to see if your LaTeX distribution was properly installed to your system path.
- Reinstalling the LaTeX system may be recommended.
Now that an installed LaTeX PDF tool has been identified, we can proceed with compiling our actual main .tex file. First, locate your main .tex file locally on your system, and change directories to the location of that file.
$ cd LaTeXProject
Now that you are located in your LaTeX project--where your main .tex file exists (which we will call main.tex for the sake of example)--you can compile the main.tex file with the command xelatex main.tex.
$ xelatex main.tex
This is XeTeX, Version 3.141592653-2.6-0.999993 (TeX Live 2021/Arch Linux) (preloaded format=xelatex)
restricted \write18 enabled.
entering extended mode
(./main.tex
...
Transcript written on main.log.
At this point, you can list the contents of the working directory and find the outputted PDF, corresponding to the filename of the provided .tex file. As the example uses a file called main.tex, the PDF generated above would be called main.pdf. You may also notice additional files corresponding to the file name after the compilation process. Files such as main.aux and main.log, which are auxiliary files and log files respectively. These files can be inspected for additional information on the results of the recently run compilation process, however they can typically be ignored.
If you are following along with these instructions by cloning the provided git repository located at https://github.com/jaxtonw/LaTeXCompilingInstructions, this section will guide you in compiling the provided example LaTeX project.
Assuming you have the cloned repository locally at the path ~/LaTeXCompilingInstructions (modify path as needed), change directories into the provided example directory with a sample LaTeX project.
$ cd ~/LaTeXCompilingInstructions/example
You can then list the contents of this directory to confirm it contain main.tex, the provided sample LaTeX file for you to compile. Once in the directory with this file, you can use your LaTeX PDF command of choice followed by the main.tex file name to generate the PDF located at main.pdf.
$ xelatex main.tex
This is XeTeX, Version 3.141592653-2.6-0.999993 (TeX Live 2021/Arch Linux) (preloaded format=xelatex)
restricted \write18 enabled.
entering extended mode
(./main.tex
...
Transcript written on main.log.
At this point, you can list the contents of the working directory and find the PDF main.pdf. You may also notice additional files such as main.aux and main.log, which are auxiliary files and log files respectively; generated during the compilation process. These files can be inspected for additional information on the results of the recently run compilation process, however they can typically be ignored.