issues

We cannot use the built in install_tinytex() as this puts the installation in the wrong place.

From time to time additional LATEX packages need to be added.

download and setup

At work we have no admin rights on our laptops. From an IT security perspective, we have been granted some writing and load library rights from the dev subfolder on C.

As we cannot use the install_tinytex, download the latest “release” from

https://github.com/yihui/tinytex-releases

Setup/make sure the path in the Environment Variables is added/correct.

C:\Users\rkoelle\dev\TinyTeX\bin\win32

if several downloads fail, think about setting a different repo

> tinytex::tlmgr_repo(url = "http://mirror.physik-pool.tu-berlin.de/pub/CTAN/")
tlmgr option repository "http://mirror.physik-pool.tu-berlin.de/pub/CTAN/systems/texlive/tlnet"
tlmgr.pl: setting default package repository to http://mirror.physik-pool.tu-berlin.de/pub/CTAN/systems/texlive/tlnet
tlmgr.pl: updating C:/Users/rkoelle/dev/TinyTeX/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb

download missing LATEX packages

Since a while {tinytex} comes with 2 nifty utility functions to check for (or launch immediately the installation of) missing packages. If knit-to-pdf hangs or fails, run

• tinytex::parse_packages(“paper.log”) to check for a list of missing package
• tinytex::parse_install(“paper.log”) to check and launch the download of the missing package(s)

If tinytex coughs up, there is normally an attempt to download the missing packages. I still have not really found out why/when. The text also suggests that the download from the chosen mirror is failing. However, the messages comprise a pointer to the missing packages.

For example, a recent drill resultet in these messages:

tlmgr.pl: package repository http://ftp.math.purdue.edu/mirrors/ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet (not verified: unknown)
[1/2, ??:??/??:??] install: IEEEtran [88k]
TLPDB::_install_data: downloading did not succeed (download_file failed) for http://ftp.math.purdue.edu/mirrors/ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/archive/IEEEtran.tar.xz
[2/2, 07:51/08:09] install: xtuthesis [4k]
TLPDB::_install_data: downloading did not succeed (download_file failed) for http://ftp.math.purdue.edu/mirrors/ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/archive/xtuthesis.tar.xz
tlmgr.pl: package log updated: C:/Users/rkoelle/dev/TinyTeX/texmf-var/web2c/tlmgr.log

With this one can install the packages by hand

tinytex::tlmgr_install("nameofmissingpackage").

experience

Might take time! Grab a coffee!

The following ran for a good 20 min on the dummy Rmd page for bookdown::pdf_book:base_format:ieee_article. The rendering failed and executing the parse_packages on the log file took a while. :)

> tinytex::parse_packages("paper.log")
tlmgr search --file --global "/IEEEtran.cls"
[1] "IEEEtran"  "xtuthesis"

Most of the times, parse_install() fails. Thus, I regularly do this by hand

tinytex::tlmgr_install("IEEEtran")

Good luck with updating tinytex!