livetex

A TeX/LaTeX auto builder and deployer.

Demonstration

a.webm

Usage Example

./livetex -r ~/latex -a 0.0.0.0:8000 -c xelatex --output-format=pdf --halt-on-error

After running the command above, PDF preview is available at http://localhost:8000/<tex-filename> (e.g. http://localhost:8000/foo.tex). And, everytime the file ~/latex/*.tex changes, the webpage will reload automatically.

CLI Usage

A live integrated server that compiles TeX and serve its PDF automatically on source changes

Usage: livetex [OPTIONS] --root <ROOT>

Options:
  -a, --addr <ADDR>
          Server address [default: 0.0.0.0:8080]
  -r, --root <ROOT>
          Root directory to serve
  -c, --build-command <BUILD_COMMAND>...
          Command to build a TeX file. This argument should be present last
  -h, --help
          Print help

Alternatives

I've discovered some other approaches to achieve automatic TeX compilation + PDF reloading.

Compilation

• autotex

• latexmk

  latexmk -pdf -pvc -pdflatex='xelatex --halt-on-error' a.tex
  

Previewing

• pdf-live-server

However, none of them reflect compilation error on the PDF previewing side (they just remain unchanged), which is what I want to achieve.