nixpkgs/doc/languages-frameworks/texlive.section.md

TeX Live

There is a TeX Live packaging that lives entirely under attribute texlive.

User's guide

• For basic usage, use some of the prebuilt environments available at the top level, such as texliveBasic, texliveSmall. For the full list of prebuilt environments, inspect texlive.schemes.

• Packages cannot be used directly but must be assembled in an environment. To create or add packages to an environment, use

  texliveSmall.withPackages (
    ps: with ps; [
      collection-langkorean
      algorithms
      cm-super
    ]
  )
  

  The function withPackages can be called multiple times to add more packages.

  • Note. Within Nixpkgs, packages should only use prebuilt environments as inputs, such as texliveSmall or texliveInfraOnly, and should not depend directly on texlive. Further dependencies should be added by calling withPackages. This is to ensure that there is a consistent and simple way to override the inputs.

• texlive.withPackages uses the same logic as buildEnv. Only parts of a package are installed in an environment: its 'runtime' files (tex output), binaries (out output), and support files (tlpkg output). Moreover, man and info pages are assembled into separate man and info outputs. To add only the TeX files of a package, or its documentation (texdoc output), just specify the outputs:

  texliveBasic.withPackages (
    ps: with ps; [
      texdoc # recommended package to navigate the documentation
      perlPackages.LaTeXML.tex # tex files of LaTeXML, omit binaries
      cm-super
      cm-super.texdoc # documentation of cm-super
    ]
  )
  

• To add the documentation for all packages in the environment, use

  texliveSmall.overrideAttrs { withDocs = true; }
  

  This can be applied before or after calling withPackages. The parameter withSources adds all source containers.

• All packages distributed by TeX Live, which contains most of CTAN, are available and can be found under texlive.pkgs:

  $ nix repl
  nix-repl> :l <nixpkgs>
  nix-repl> texlive.pkgs.[TAB]
  

  These are derivations with outputs out, tex, texdoc, texsource, tlpkg, man, info. They cannot be installed outside of texlive.withPackages but are available for other uses. To repackage a font, for instance, use

  stdenvNoCC.mkDerivation (finalAttrs: {
    src = texlive.pkgs.iwona;
    dontUnpack = true;
  
    inherit (finalAttrs.src) pname version;
  
    installPhase = ''
      runHook preInstall
      install -Dm644 $src/fonts/opentype/nowacki/iwona/*.otf -t $out/share/fonts/opentype
      runHook postInstall
    '';
  })
  

  See biber, iwona for complete examples.

Custom packages

You may find that you need to use an external TeX package. A derivation for such package has to provide the contents of the "texmf" directory in its "tex" output, according to the TeX Directory Structure. Dependencies on other TeX packages can be listed in the attribute passthru.tlDeps, which is a function taking a package set and returning a list of packages.

The function texlive.withPackages recognise the following outputs:

• "out": contents are linked in the TeX Live environment, and binaries in the $out/bin folder are wrapped;
• "tex": linked in $TEXMFDIST; files should follow the TDS (for instance $tex/tex/latex/foiltex/foiltex.cls);
• "texdoc", "texsource": ignored by default, treated as "tex";
• "tlpkg": linked in $TEXMFROOT/tlpkg;
• "man", "info", ...: the other outputs are combined into separate outputs.

Here is a (very verbose) example. See also the packages auctex, eukleides, mftrace for more examples.

with import <nixpkgs> { };

let
  foiltex = stdenvNoCC.mkDerivation {
    pname = "latex-foiltex";
    version = "2.1.4b";

    outputs = [
      "tex"
      "texdoc"
    ];
    passthru.tlDeps = ps: [ ps.latex ];

    srcs = [
      (fetchurl {
        url = "http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/foiltex/foiltex.dtx";
        hash = "sha256-/2I2xHXpZi0S988uFsGuPV6hhMw8e0U5m/P8myf42R0=";
      })
      (fetchurl {
        url = "http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/foiltex/foiltex.ins";
        hash = "sha256-KTm3pkd+Cpu0nSE2WfsNEa56PeXBaNfx/sOO2Vv0kyc=";
      })
    ];

    unpackPhase = ''
      runHook preUnpack

      for _src in $srcs; do
        cp "$_src" $(stripHash "$_src")
      done

      runHook postUnpack
    '';

    nativeBuildInputs = [
      (texliveSmall.withPackages (
        ps: with ps; [
          cm-super
          hypdoc
          latexmk
        ]
      ))
      writableTmpDirAsHomeHook # Need a writable $HOME for latexmk
    ];

    # multiple-outputs.sh fails if $out is not defined
    preHook = ''
      out="''${tex-}"
    '';

    dontConfigure = true;

    buildPhase = ''
      runHook preBuild

      # Generate the style files
      latex foiltex.ins

      # Generate the documentation
      latexmk -pdf foiltex.dtx

      runHook postBuild
    '';

    installPhase = ''
      runHook preInstall

      path="$tex/tex/latex/foiltex"
      mkdir -p "$path"
      cp *.{cls,def,clo,sty} "$path/"

      path="$texdoc/doc/tex/latex/foiltex"
      mkdir -p "$path"
      cp *.pdf "$path/"

      runHook postInstall
    '';

    meta = {
      description = "LaTeX2e class for overhead transparencies";
      license = lib.licenses.unfreeRedistributable;
      maintainers = with lib.maintainers; [ veprbl ];
      platforms = lib.platforms.all;
    };
  };

  latex_with_foiltex = texliveSmall.withPackages (_: [ foiltex ]);
in
runCommand "test.pdf" { nativeBuildInputs = [ latex_with_foiltex ]; } ''
  cat >test.tex <<EOF
  \documentclass{foils}

  \title{Presentation title}
  \date{}

  \begin{document}
  \maketitle
  \end{document}
  EOF
    pdflatex test.tex
    cp test.pdf $out
''

LuaLaTeX font cache

The font cache for LuaLaTeX is written to $HOME. Therefore, it is necessary to set $HOME to a writable path, e.g. before using LuaLaTeX in nix derivations:

runCommand "lualatex-hello-world" { buildInputs = [ texliveFull ]; } ''
  mkdir $out
  echo '\documentclass{article} \begin{document} Hello world \end{document}' > main.tex
  env HOME=$(mktemp -d) lualatex  -interaction=nonstopmode -output-format=pdf -output-directory=$out ./main.tex
''

Additionally, the cache of a user can diverge from the nix store. To resolve font issues that might follow, the cache can be removed by the user:

luaotfload-tool --cache=erase --flush-lookups --force