LaTeX Makefile

[dankdave]

Does anyone know what's wrong with this Makefile? I thought the Makefile would be smart enough to know whether or not any of the .tex files have changed, and therefore not run pdflatex if they weren't ...

# List all the files that are used when producing the pdf
FILES = \
    main.tex \
    chap1.tex \
    chap2.tex \
    chap3.tex \
    chap4.tex \
    chap5.tex \
    appendix.tex

# this line should only execute when a single file from above has been altered
# The only problem is that isn't the case ...
all: $(FILES)
	pdflatex main.tex

Of course, that's a tab before the pdflatex command ...

[Bachstelze]

# List all the files that are used when producing the pdf
FILES = \
    main.tex \
    chap1.tex \
    chap2.tex \
    chap3.tex \
    chap4.tex \
    chap5.tex \
    appendix.tex

# this line should only execute when a single file from above has been altered
# The only problem is that isn't the case ...
main.pdf: $(FILES)
	pdflatex main.tex

If you don't say what the output file is, make can't check if a source file is more recent than it.

[dankdave]

I think I'm going to run with latexmk, which is available in the repositories. If you have a project that depends on a few different .tex files, and main.tex is your main file, you can get away with simply typing:

latexmk main.tex

I think this is the makefile I'm going to roll with:

TEX = latexmk

# List all the files that are used when producing the pdf
MAIN_FILE = main.tex

FILES = \
    chap1.tex \
    chap2.tex \
    chap3.tex \
    chap4.tex \
    chap5.tex \
    appendix.tex

FLAGS = -bibtex -pdf

all: $(FILES)
	$(TEX) $(FLAGS) $(MAIN_FILE)

clean:
	rm *.pdf *.aux *.log *.toc *.lof

http://www.phys.psu.edu/~collins/software/latexmk-jcc/

[dankdave]

If you don't say what the output file is, make can't check if a source file is more recent than it.

What's the order that the dependencies get resolved in? I originally wanted to run pdflatex only when one of the .tex files gets changed.

However, with that being said, maybe that's not such a hot idea. Sometimes you need to run pdflatex a few times in order to get all the citations and references to actually show up in your pdf.

[Bachstelze]

What's the order that the dependencies get resolved in? I originally wanted to run pdflatex only when one of the .tex files gets changed.

The command will be run if any of the files listed as a dependency was modified, so the order is unimportant. If you want to check for only one file, include only that file as a dependency. What you said about running it several times is true, though...