Building the Foundations to Coding Success

Dependencies

Ensure you have a LaTeX distribution installed on your system, such as MiKTeX or TeX Live

• TeX Live
• MiKTeX
• Perl
• Pygments

Setup

To set up LaTeX in VSCode for compiling LaTeX files into PDFs

1. Install LaTeX Workshop Extension:

• Open VSCode
• Go to the Extensions view by clicking on the Extensions icon in the Activity Bar (or press Ctrl+Shift+X or Cmd+Shift+X)
• Search for "LaTeX Workshop" in the Extensions Marketplace and install it

2. Check LaTeX Distribution

Ensure you have a LaTeX distribution installed on your system. Popular distributions include TeX Live (recommended for most users) or MiKTeX (for Windows)

3. Configure LaTeX Workshop in VSCode

• Open one of the LaTeX documents (e.g., beginner.tex)
• Set the LaTeX Workshop as the default builder:
  • Open the VSCode Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P or Cmd+Shift+P)
  • Type "LaTeX Workshop: Build LaTeX project" and select it. This sets LaTeX Workshop as the default builder for LaTeX files

4. Customize Build Settings (Optional)

• You can configure LaTeX Workshop settings based on your preferences:
  • Go to VSCode Settings (Ctrl+, or Cmd+,)
  • Search for "LaTeX Workshop" settings
  • Adjust settings like LaTeX distribution, build commands, PDF viewer, etc...

5. Compile LaTeX to PDF

• With LaTeX Workshop installed and configured, you can now compile your LaTeX files to PDF:
  • Open a .tex file
  • Press Ctrl+Alt+B or Cmd+Alt+B to compile the LaTeX document
  • View the output in the LaTeX Workshop panel at the bottom of the VSCode window

6. Installing Pygments for Customization

• To utilize Pygments within a LaTeX document, you typically use the minted package, which interfaces with Pygments to highlight code within your LaTeX document

pip install Pygments

• When compiling your LaTeX document that uses the minted package, you'll need to use the --shell-escape flag. For example, if you're using pdflatex:

pdflatex -shell-escape yourfile.tex

• This flag allows LaTeX to execute external programs (in this case, Pygments) to generate the highlighted code!

Troubleshooting --- LaTeX in Compiling // + Git Bash

1. Check LaTeX Distribution Installation

• Ensure your LaTeX distribution (e.g., MiKTeX or TeX Live) is correctly installed and its binaries are added to the system PATH
• Test by running pdflatex or latexmk commands in Git Bash to verify if the LaTeX distribution is accessible

2. Verify Environment Variables

• Check if the PATH environment variable includes the path to your LaTeX distribution's binaries.
• Open Git Bash and type echo $PATH to view the PATH environment variable. Verify if the LaTeX binaries directory is included

3. PATH Configuration:

• If the LaTeX distribution's binaries are not in the PATH
  • Locate the directory containing pdflatex or latexmk (e.g., C:\texlive\2021\bin\win32 for TeX Live)
  • Add the LaTeX distribution's bin directory to the PATH

    export PATH="/path/to/latex/bin:$PATH"

    Replace /path/to/latex/bin with the actual path to the LaTeX binaries
  • Test LaTeX commands again in Git Bash

4. File Permissions

• Ensure that you have appropriate permissions to access and modify files in the LaTeX project directory
• Use ls -l command in Git Bash to check file permissions