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Set up Tex environment with VSCode in Manjaro

Last update: 2023-04-03 15:32:33

For more recent setup, check out this public repo: https://github.com/loscati/minimal_latex_templates

This is a brief tutorial to install and work with Tex, actually to pdfTex (engine), LaTex (macros) and Biber (bibliography engine).

An introduction to Tex and all its flavours together with an introduction to BibLaTex is important to understand what is happening under the hood, and thus better debug hopefully-not-so-many errors. Also this stack exchange post is useful to understand Biber as well as its documentation for styles etc.

Install Tex Live

We need to install a distribution which collect all the necessary tools (engines, macros etc.) to build files. We'll use Tex Live which in Manjaro is contained in the texlive-most package. Biber, needed to use bibLaTex, is contained in a separate package named, not surprisingly, biber.

sudo pacman -Syu texlive-most biber

Watch out for all the perl packages required by biber, they can break in some unpleasant way.

Install VSCode and its extensions

In the Manjaro repo, VSCode is called code

sudo pacman -Syu code

Open VSCode and install the extension required to work with Tex code. Use the shortcut crtl + P and install LaTex Workshop using the command:

ext install James-Yu.latex-workshop

Option to set

WIP

Some useful info about working with Tex in VSCode

  • SyncTex: to jump from source to pdf (when using an internal pdf viewer) select the text and use the shortcut ctrl + alt + j. Viceversa, by clicking at a specific point in the pdf while holding down ctrl, the software finds the relative part in the source code.
  • Clean extra files: shortcut ctrl + alt + c remove extra files produced by compilation
  • latexmk: software, written in perl, which installs together with Tex Live. It is automatically used by the Latex Workshop extension to chose how to build the document. For example if we have a bibliography to compile with Biber, latexmk does the following: run pdfTex, then Biber and pdfTex again as it should be.
  • The extension can automatically format the document, if you want you can set the automatic formatting onSave

Troubleshooting

  • If the formatting does not work because stderr: Can't locate YAML/Tiny.pm in @INC (you may need to install the YAML::Tiny module), then you have to install the perl modules required by using cpan YAML::Tiny module. This has to be done for all modules required. Tip: check output > Latex Workshop for hints about this problem, or call the latexindent program from terminal.

Test and MWE

The Minimal Working Example (MWE) is the following

\documentclass{article}
    % General document formatting
    \usepackage[margin=0.7in]{geometry}
    \usepackage[parfill]{parskip}
    \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
    
    % Related to math
    \usepackage{amsmath,amssymb,amsfonts,amsthm} 

    \usepackage{biblatex}
    \addbibresource{biblio.bib}

\begin{document}

Name, date, Exercise X

\section*{Part a}

Citing \cite{clementi2000jomb}

\section*{Part b}

etc

\printbibliography

\end{document}

with a biblio.bib file as follow:

@article{clementi2000jomb,
  title = {Topological and Energetic Factors: What Determines the Structural Details of the Transition State Ensemble and ``En-Route'' Intermediates for Protein Folding? An Investigation for Small Globular Proteins},
  shorttitle = {Topological and Energetic Factors},
  author = {Clementi, Cecilia and Nymeyer, Hugh and Onuchic, Jos{\'e} Nelson},
  year = {2000},
  month = may,
  volume = {298},
  pages = {937--953},
  doi = {10.1006/jmbi.2000.3693},
  journal = {Journal of Molecular Biology},
  number = {5}
}