TUM dissertation/PhD thesis LaTeX template

An unofficial Latex template for a TUM dissertation/PhD thesis that aims to satisfy the new 2016 corporate design guidelines of the TUM regarding titlepage header and color usage.

Made by Andre Richter with help from his colleagues.

For a preview of the cover, click here. For a full preview, see either the template PDF or have a look at already published dissertations in the Hall of Fame.

Hall of Fame

If you used the template to publish your dissertation, we'd be super happy if you reference yourself in the Hall of Fame. Just create a pull request or an issue.

The Hall of Fame is also a great resource for previewing the template and getting inspired regarding style.

Getting started

The following instructions work with Linux, macOS and Windows, because a Docker image is used that provides the whole build environment.

Docker image info

Step by step

Install Docker on your system. Find install instructions or binaries for your OS here.
- Windows users only: Share the local drive. Right-click on the Docker icon in the bottom right gives you access to the settings.
Logos are needed for the cover. To circumvent copyright problems, they must be downloaded using your TUM login and cropped manually. You can skip this for now, and run make placeholder (or make.bat placeholder under Windows) to use placeholders. But eventually you need to get the logos:
1. Login at https://portal.mytum.de/corporatedesign/vorlagen/index_Logos
2. Download the SVG version of the blue TUM logo and save it to inc/
3. Download the SVG version of your faculty's logo and save it to inc/
4. If the above link did not work for you, e.g. you could not see or access the logos, please refer to the section Link list of logo resources at the bottom of this readme. They provide alternative links that may work.
5. Start a terminal/console/command and navigate where you saved the repository.
  1. Linux/macOS: Execute make crop
  2. Windows: Execute make.bat crop

The command in the last step will first pull the Docker image from remote, which will take a couple of minutes. Fortunately, this must only be done once.

If everything worked, your setup is complete now and you are good to go!

Building the PDF

Linux/macOS

In a terminal, execute

make to build the pdf.
make clean to clean up temporary files.

Windows

In a cmd or powershell, execute

make.bat to build the pdf.
make.bat clean to clean up temporary files.

Double-clicking make.bat in the explorer also builds the pdf.

Troubleshooting

Linux/macOS

If you get errors on the make commands, you can try to invoke them via sudo, e.g. sudo make crop

Template Usage

At the top of dissertation.tex, you'll find parameters for the titlepage, e.g. names, faculty name, dissertation title, etc.
- Also, have a look at the two binding correction options!
Use \captionabove{} instead of \caption{} if you place a caption above a figure.
Easy usage of TUM CI colors is provided by the tumcolors package. See doc/tumcolor.pdf for instructions.

Compatibility

The TUM design guidelines lack explicit statements about how to place non-quadratic faculty logos. Each faculty logo has at least a partial circle. Most likely, the logo must be centered to the center of the logo's partial circle, and scale the diameter of the partial circle to 10mm. At least this is what we can derive from looking at page 16 of the style guide.

TODOs

Error handling in crop_place_logos.sh (missing binaries, files not found, etc.).
Improve the windows batch file.

Building without Docker

Linux/macOS users who want to build without Docker most likely know what to do. Dependencies can be found inside Dockerfile. The Makefile already has targets for building without docker, just make them default.

Auto build and publish dissertation

You can auto build and publish your dissertation on every tagged release.

GitLab

Use GitLab (e.g. gitlab.com or gitlab.lrz.de).
Enable Pipelines for your project under Settings > General > Permissions.
Enable GitLab runners for your project under Settings > CI/CD.
Create a Personal Access Token with the api scope.
Add the token as environment variable GITLAB_ACCESS_TOKEN in project Settings > CI/CD > Variables.
Create and push a tag, wait ~2mins and find your dissertation as PDF under your project tags to download (https://gitlab.com/USER/REPO/tags).

Note: https://gitlab.lrz.de/ currently does not provide shared runners. Submit a friendly request here: https://servicedesk.lrz.de/de

GitHub

To use GitHub Actions, you can simply paste the below code into a new .yml or .yaml file in .github/workflows/. The automatic tests then work after the next push event.

# This is a workflow file to auto-build the latex code.

name: CI

# Controls when the action will run. Triggers the workflow on push or pull request
# events but only for the master branch
on:
  push:
    branches: [ master ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ master ]

# A workflow run is made up of one or more jobs that can run sequentially or in parallel
jobs:
  # This workflow contains a single job called "build"
  build:
    # The type of runner that the job will run on
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    # Steps represent a sequence of tasks that will be executed as part of the job
    steps:
    # Checks-out your repository under $GITHUB_WORKSPACE, so your job can access it
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2

    # Runs a single command using the runners shell
    - name: Build
      uses: docker://andrerichter/tum-dissertation-latex
      with:
        entrypoint: make
        args: pdf-local
        # if your dissertation is not in the root directory of the github repository, add the directory using the -C option of make.

    # Publish the artifacts
    - name: Publish artifact
      uses: actions/upload-artifact@v2-preview
      with:
        name: dissertation
        path: dissertation.pdf
        # if your dissertation is not in the root directory of the github repository, you have to adapt the previous path!

    # Publish artifact as release so it is more prominent
    - name: Release artifact
      uses: ncipollo/release-action@v1
      with:
        artifacts: "dissertation.pdf"
        # if your dissertation is not in the root directory of the github repository, you have to adapt the previous path!
        token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        tag: current
        allowUpdates: true

Link list of logo resources

Contributions

Andre Richter - andre.richter@tum.de

Makefile
Title page design
Plot cycle list
Figures, tables, acronyms in table of contents
Added a customized bibliography style based on unsrturl.bst that abbreviates first names
Appendix support
TUM color syntax highlighting for source code listings
Siunitx styles
Support for non-quadratic faculty logos

Michael Vonbun - michael.vonbun@tum.de