latexgit: Accessing Git Repositories from LaTeX

• Introduction
• Installation
• Files
• License
• Contact

1. Introduction

latexgit is a LaTeX package that works in combination with a Python companion package for accessing files located in git repositories from within LaTeX. It works somewhat like BibTeX: In your LaTeX document, you first can define requests to load files from git repositories. During your first LaTeX compilation, these requests just evaluate to dummy results. They are, however, stored in that aux file of your project, say article.aux. Then you execute python3 -m latexgit.aux article (pretty much as you would execute bibtex article for building a bibliography). This Python package will then perform the actual git requests and update the aux file. In your next LaTeX pass, you can now access the contents of these files. This process is described in detail in the documentation.

2. Installation and Usage

1. Install the Python package latexgit via pip install latexgit
2. Download and copy latexgit.sty from https://thomasweise.github.io/latexgit_tex/latexgit.sty into the folder of your LaTeX project or unpack latexgit.tds.zip into your TeX tree¹ as described here or here.
3. Find the usage of the latexgit LaTeX package described in latexgit.pdf at https://thomasweise.github.io/latexgit_tex/latexgit.pdf.
4. Optionally: Read the documentation of the latexgit Python companion at https://thomasweise.github.io/latexgit_py.

To sum up things briefly: If you use the command \gitLoad{myRepoUrl}{myFilePath}{myPostProcessor}, then our package will download the file at path myFilePath relative to the root of the git repository available at URL myRepoUrl. If myPostProcessor is left empty, the file is provided as-is at the path \gitFile which will automatically by defined by \gitLoad. If not left empty, myPostProcessor is executed as command in the shell, the downloaded file is piped into its stdin, and whatever the command writes to its stdout will become available as file pointed to by \gitFile. You can then include this file or load it as code listing. Again, please read the documentation.

If your main document was stored as article.tex, you would build it using (at least) the three following steps:

1. pdflatex article
2. python3 -m latexgit.aux article
3. pdflatex article

3. Files

Below, we provide a list of files that may be interesting to look at.

1. latexgit.dtx is the main source file of the package [html] | [raw]
2. latexgit.ins is the installation script of the package [html] | [raw]
3. latexgit.sty is the compiled style file [html] | [raw]
4. latexgit.tds.zip is a TDS packaged version of our package. In other words, it is an a .zip file that is ready to unzip into a user's TeX tree¹. This may be done as described here or here.
5. latexgit.pdf is the documentation of the package [pdf]
6. LICENSE.html holds the license information for the package [html]
7. Makefile is the make file with the build process [html] | [raw]
8. requirements.txt holds the Python requirements for using the package [html] | [txt]
9. requirements-dev.txt holds the Python requirements for building the package [html] | [txt]

4. License

latexgit is a tool for accessing files in git repositories from LaTeX.

Copyright (C) 2023 Thomas Weise (汤卫思教授)

Dr. Thomas Weise (see Contact) holds the copyright of this package. The package and its documentation are under the LaTeX Project Public License, version 1.3, which may be found online at http://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt or at https://thomasweise.github.io/latexgit_tex/LICENSE.html.

5. Contact

If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact Prof. Dr. Thomas Weise (汤卫思教授) of the Institute of Applied Optimization (应用优化研究所, IAO) of the School of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data (人工智能与大数据学院) at Hefei University (合肥学院) in Hefei, Anhui, China (中国安徽省合肥市) via email to tweise@hfuu.edu.cn with CC to tweise@ustc.edu.cn.