ahmed-alhindawi / latex-template

LaTeX Template to author documents in VS Code and Build PDFs

📚 LaTeX Template

This template repository provides a path to creating local LaTeX documents.

This requires an opinionated stack of tools, and as such, I have decided to use the following:

• VSCode: for its ability to have plugins and integration with GitHub and cruciallly, with its ability to use Dev Containers and work within a Docker container
• Grammarly: Provided as an extension in the .devcontainer which VSCode will then launch. It will prompt you to login
• LaTeX Workshop: To build the document locally and provide autocompletion
• Error Lens: Highlights the errors from Grammarly and LaTeX build in the source code.

Workflow

To use this framework, follow these steps:

• Click on the green Use this template button and create your repository under your own GitHub. During this creation process, you can mark this as Private and thus only you can see your document
• Pull your GitHub repository locally.
• Open VSCode, make sure you have the Dev Containers from Microsoft extensions installed.
• Open the folder where you have cloned the repository. VSCode will prompt you to open this folder with the Dev Containers extension.
• Et Viola! You now have a working locally built, CI/CD integrated, LaTeX build.

You can now:

• Modify main.tex.
• Press Ctrl+Alt+B to initiate the shortcut for building the LaTeX file.
• You'll see a little spinning "Building" status bar indicator at the bottom
• Press Ctrl+Alt+V to see your newly Built PDF.

Optionally:

• Commit your changes to GitHub once you've done some code. GitHub will then initiate the build PDF there as well.

Optionally:

If you use Overleaf, you can link your overleaf account to your GitHub account and also collaborate there. Pushing to the main branch from Overleaf will trigger the CI/CD GitHub Actions.

Docker Image

The docker image, as seen in .devcontainer/Dockerfile uses Ubuntu 22.04 with the latest version of TeXLive-Full and thus should contain all the packages that a full tex installation would require

GitHub Actions

I have specified a .github/workflows action that will build the PDF upon a push to the main branch. This wil trigger a build action and produce an Artifiact with the built PDF.

Useful if you're using the GitHub Code editor (hint: press "." in GitHub).

Contributing

If you would like to contribute, please fork/fix/pull requests as you see fit. I've provisionally placed the repository under an MIT license.