Summary and Setup

This is a new lesson built with The Carpentries Workbench.

This workshop will demonstrate how to use TeX Live in order to write and render LaTeX documents. TeX Live is a comprehensive TeX system that includes all of the necessary tools to compile and render LaTeX documents. It is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux, and can be installed on your local machine.

Software Setup

You can find installation instructions for TeX Live on the TeX Live website. We include a brief overview of the installation on this page for convenience, but we recommend that you refer to the official documentation for the most up-to-date instructions.

Windows Installation

Visit the TeX Live website for the latest version of the TeX Live installer for Windows. Click the link to “install-tl-windows.exe.”

The full TeX Live installation is recommended for most users, as it includes all of the necessary packages and tools to compile and render LaTeX documents. However, if you have limited disk space or a slow internet connection, you can install a minimal version of TeX Live that includes only the commonly used packages.

Run the installer and select “Install” from the dialog that appears, then click “Next”.

Click “Install” to begin the installation process. This will unpack some files, before opening a new window called the “Tex Live Installer”.

If desired, you can change the installation directory by clicking on the “Change” button.

When the installation is complete, you can close the installer windows.

Run the installer and select “Install” from the dialog that appears, then click “Next”.

Click “Install” to begin the installation process. This will unpack some files, before opening a new window called the “Tex Live Installer”.

If desired, you can change the installation directory by clicking on the “Change” button.

Select “Advanced” to bring up the custom installation options.

Under “Selection”, select “Change” next “Scheme” and choose “basic scheme (plain ad latex)” to install a minimal set of packages.

Ensure that the “Install TeXworks front end” option is selected.

When the installation is complete, you can close the installer windows.

macOS Installation

Visit the MaxTeX Download Page for the latest version of the MacTeX installer for macOS. Click the link to download the “MacTeX.pkg” file.

Double click the downloaded “MacTeX.pkg” file to start the installation process. Follow the prompts to complete the installation. The default installation options are recommended for most users.

Open a terminal and type tex --version to verify that TeX Live is installed correctly. You should see the version number of TeX Live printed to the console.

Open a terminal and enter pdflatex --version to check that the PDFLaTeX compiler is installed correctly. You should see the version number of PDFLaTeX printed to the console.

Unix/Linux Installation

BASH

cd /tmp
wget https://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/install-tl-unx.tar.gz
zcat < install-tl-unx.tar.gz | tar xf -
cd install-tl-2*
perl ./install-tl --no-interaction --scheme=small

This process will download and install TeX Live in the /usr/local/texlive directory by default. Note that the download may take several hours.

Finally, prepend /usr/local/texlive/2023/bin/x86_64-linux to your PATH environment variable in order to use the TeX Live binaries from the command line. You can do this by adding the following line to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile file:

BASH

export PATH="/usr/local/texlive/2023/bin/x86_64-linux:$PATH"

Verify Installation

Open a command prompt or terminal and type tex --version to verify that TeX Live is installed correctly. You should see the version number of TeX Live printed to the console.

Open a command prompt or terminal and enter pdflatex --version to check that the PDFLaTeX compiler is installed correctly. You should see the version number of PDFLaTeX printed to the console.

Open TeXworks, which is a simple LaTeX editor that comes with TeX Live and paste the following code into a new document:

LATEX

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Hello, \LaTeX!
\end{document}

Then click on the green “Typeset” button (or press Ctrl+T) to compile the document. If you see a PDF preview of the document with the text “Hello, LaTeX!” then everything is working correctly.