A Simple Makefile for Latex

Compiling a latex documents may take several steps when bibtex is used with latex. However, this latex compilation process is the same for most documents. We can make it a template with Makefile so that simply running make will generate the dvi/ps/pdf files for us.

A simple Makefile for using latex with bibtex enabled is as follows (replace the spaces with TAB at the beginning of each line).

Download the Makefile directly: Makefile.

Please set “filename” as the main tex file’s name for your document project.

The Makefile first generates dvi by calling latex by 3 times and bibtex by 1 time and then generate the ps file and pdf files.

The usage:

Compile to pdf:

make

Compile pdf file and read it in Evince:

make clean; make && make read

Or use Adobe Reader by:

make clean; make && make aread

Clean up temporary files:

make clean

Eric Ma

Eric is a systems guy. Eric is interested in building high-performance and scalable distributed systems and related technologies. The views or opinions expressed here are solely Eric's own and do not necessarily represent those of any third parties.

6 comments:

    1. got it. Thank you! I think it work in general. But,
      I compile with `pdflatex -shell-escape main.tex` as I am using the minted package to display codes. So your Makefile still does not work in my case..I am using beamer latex…

  1. Hey, My Latex report has some images in it and when i am trying to make it, it is giving me errors could you please help me with that?

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