This repo is meant to be used with VSCode to provide a quick and functional full fleece LeTeX Environment. It can be run as a DevContainer or on the web an ANY device using Codespaces or GitPods.
With this image you can:
- Have a quick, clean, working LaTeX environment setup based on TeXLive
- Use Pandoc - To convert your projects between different formats
- Use any host OS
- Run it on x86/arm/arm64 architectures or the web
- Have our environment on a remote computer
- If you use Codespaces or GitPod you can even edit your papers on every browser.
- Have a setup that is faster than MiKTeX on Windows
- Have LaTeX Workshop an LaTeX Utilities preinstalled (VSCode only)
- Markdown support (VSCode only)
- Spell checking (VSCode only)
- Persistent bash_history (VSCode only)
- Git support
- Customize your image with own users or more tools
- Scientific project template (VSCode only)
The TeX source is on your host OS and gets mounted as volume
# Open a terminal an type:
git clone https://github.com/hegerdes/VSCode-LaTeX-Container
code VSCode-LaTeX-Container
# In VSCode hit F1
> Remote-Containers: Reopen in Container
# Wait for the initial pull and build
# Note: You need to have Docker and VSCode remote extentions installed
# Search for "ms-vscode-remote.vscode-remote-extensionpack"The entire project is within your Codespace or GitPod:
Click Use this template and then open in Codespace
Alternatively click clone and head over to the Codespace tab.
The entire project is within the container
# Open VSCode
# In VSCode hit F1
> Remote-Containers: Clone Repository in Container Volume
> https://github.com/hegerdes/VSCode-LaTeX-Container
# Wait for the initial pull and build
# Note: You need to have Docker and VSCode remote extentions installed
# Search for "ms-vscode-remote.vscode-remote-extensionpack"Container images are available on DockerHub.
All images are updated every month to the latest package version via CI.
If you need reproducable enviorments use a fixed container image hash as tag.
There are multiple base images debian-[bullseye|bookworm] and ubuntu-[focal|jammy]. All these images have texlive, texlive-latex-extra texlive-lang-english, texlive-luatex, texlive-xetex, texlive-pstricks, texlive-science, latexmk, cm-super, chktex with additional tools like git, zsh and pandoc(not in alpine) installed. Every image is available on x86/arm/arm64 architectures.
The slim images only contain texlive, texlive-latex-extra, texlive-lang-english, latexmk, cm-super, chktex If you want a minimal image use these, but this might lack common tools/packages.
There are two full images that contain everything in the LaTeX world except for docs. These are BIG and generally not recommended for fast startups.
There are a bunch of language specific images that are build up on the bookworm-base and jammy-base images. Languages are: all, arabic, chinese, cjk, cyrillic, czechslovak, english, european, french, german, greek, italian, japanese, korean, other, polish, portuguese, spanish.
Use one of these if your work on a none English project! Simply change the VARIANT arg in the devcontainer.json to bookworm-lang-<YOUR_LANGUAGE> or jammy-lang-<YOUR_LANGUAGE>.
The included template was build up over the time and is designed for scientific projects. But I didn't start from scratch either. Credit goes to:
% Original author:
% WikiBooks (LaTeX - Title Creation) with modifications by:
% Vel ([email protected])
% hegerdes ([email protected])- LaTeX-OCR
- Detexify
- WolframAlpha
- ChatGPT - super nice for TIKZ
- Inkscape - super for figures
I added a VSCode workspace file with sensible setting. It includes some settings for Docker and the LaTeX extensions. Feel free to customize it after your own taste.
I always liked the concept of LaTeX and its focus on content instead of the formatting. But getting started was hard and I wanted to contribute to make it a little more accessible. I first used MiKTeX and TeXworks, but I found the usage of shortcuts hard and didn't like the PDF viewer. I switched to Notepad++, SumataPDF (both great tools) and a handy script. It was great until my projects got bigger. So I used VSCode and LaTeX Workshop and I loved it. All my shortcuts and tools I used before now applied to LaTeX. I was satisfied until I realized how slow MiKTeX on Windows is compared to Linux.
I love Linux, but some things are more convenient on Windows. I started my Bachelor theses about software development environments and the usage of container tools. So I have further developed my setup to bring everything together.
I found that the tianon/latex and other image were outdated and did not meet my expectations. I rather created my own image. It is own the large side, but I rather have all my tools there at any time instead of being slowed down by missing them or have to install packages manually. I hope some of you find some interesting tips and tricks in my setup.
If you find any issues let me know
- If you use git. Checkout everything with
lfline endings
* text=auto eol=lf
*.{cmd,[cC][mM][dD]} text eol=crlf
*.{bat,[bB][aA][tT]} text eol=crlf
- On Windows use the WSL2 backend
- You can customize your environment by changing the image in the .devcontainer folder
- You can add own users by changing the
USERNAMEandremoteUserin the devcontainer.json - Check out the template with:
# In VSCode hit F1
> Remote-Containers: Clone Repository in Container Volume
> https://github.com/hegerdes/VSCode-LaTeX-ContainerIf you like this or other projects may consider supporting me.