arch version of latex

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It's sort of a PITA, but less so than going to TUG and downlading 10G or whatever is the latest. Seems like most things can be done for approximately 1G of space, though more like 2G if adding Jabref and significant Math compiling support .

Another note: to search for a specific style, when not sure which package it's in, use the "F" option in pacman. I used this to find the "ulem" package since I wanted to strike-out some text...

$ pacman -F ulem.sty
extra/texlive-plaingeneric 2023.66594-19 (texlive)
usr/share/texmf-dist/tex/generic/ulem/ulem.sty

...and then I installed "texlive-plaingeneric" 24Mb (see below)

basic

These 4 will compile most letters and articles

# pacman -S texlive-latex texlive-basic texlive-latexrecommended texlive-plaingeneric

To include any URL's (hyperref) and some math, then additionally need (150Mb):

# pacman -S texlive-latexextra

If it fails for a font size unable to compile, then add (150Mb!):

# pacman -S texlive-fontsrecommended

math

If getting serious with math (+18MB)

# pacman -S texlive-mathscience

troubleshoot

delete old aux files

Moving from one machine to another, delete the aux file if fails for being able to, eg, locate the basic letter.cls document class.

check at command line

say I have a letter thats not compiling in my api. Try it at the command line.

$ pdflatex fooletter.tex
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.141592653-2.6-1.40.25 (TeX Live 2023/Arch Linux)
(preloaded format=pdflatex)
restricted \write18 enabled.
entering extended mode
(./fooletter.tex
LaTeX2e <2022-11-01> patch level 1
L3 programming layer <2023-02-22>

! LaTeX Error: File `letter.cls' not found.

I found the answer here I think I can put paths in .Xinitrc.

bibtex

Goes in oK with the latex versions above, but consider two additionals 1, additional styles, and 2) jabref.

$ yay -S jabref-latest
$ jabref

This 280MB behomoth allows a person to easily edit their BibTex files and check for integrity of formatting and so on. Really helps with large bibliographies.