An extremely fast LaTeX project manager, written in Rust.

ltx is a project manager for LaTeX documents. It scaffolds structured projects, resolves your document graph, drives tectonic, pdflatex/xelatex/lualatex, and biber/bibtex in the right order, lints your source, watches for changes, and gets out of your way — built for people who'd rather be writing than babysitting a build.

Status: pre-1.0. The CLI surface is stabilizing; expect minor breaking changes between minor versions until 1.0. See CHANGELOG.md.

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Table of contents

• Why ltx
• Features
• Installation
• Quick start
• Usage
• Configuration
• How it compares
• Project layout
• Contributing
• License

Why ltx

Most LaTeX workflows are stitched together from shell scripts, latexmk, and muscle memory. ltx treats your document the way a modern build tool treats a codebase:

• Correct by construction — dependency-aware compilation means bibliographies, indices, and multi-pass cross-references resolve without manual re-runs.
• Fast — incremental builds, parallel auxiliary passes, and a Rust core mean large multi-file theses and papers compile in a fraction of the time.
• Predictable — one ltx.toml describes your project; builds behave the same on your machine, your co-author's machine, and in CI.

Features

• 🚀 Incremental builds — only recompiles what changed, including transitive \input/\include graphs
• 🔁 Automatic multi-pass resolution — handles biber/bibtex, makeindex, and repeated pdflatex passes until the document is stable
• 🔍 Linting — catches common LaTeX mistakes and style issues before you compile
• 👀 Watch mode — rebuilds on save for a tight write–compile–preview loop
• 📦 Project scaffolding — ltx new generates a clean, opinionated project structure
• 🧹 Clean workspace — auxiliary files are isolated to a build directory, never scattered next to your .tex sources
• 🦀 Tectonic support — a self-contained, native-Rust TeX engine as a first-class target, no system TeX distribution required
• 🔌 Engine-agnostic — also works with pdflatex, xelatex, and lualatex for full TeX Live/MiKTeX compatibility
• 🧵 Parallel-friendly — designed to slot into CI pipelines and pre-commit hooks

Installation

With Cargo

cargo install ltx

From source

git clone https://github.com/Abdogouhmad/ltx.git
cd ltx
cargo install --path .

By default, ltx compiles with Tectonic, a self-contained, native-Rust TeX engine — no separate TeX distribution to install. If you'd rather use pdflatex, xelatex, or lualatex instead (or need a package not yet supported by Tectonic), install a traditional distribution (TeX Live, MiKTeX, or MacTeX) and put it on your PATH.

Quick start

# Scaffold a new project
ltx new my-paper
cd my-paper

# Build once
ltx build

# Rebuild on every save
ltx watch

Usage

ltx build [--engine tectonic|pdflatex|xelatex|lualatex]
ltx watch [--open]
ltx lint
ltx clean
ltx new <name> [--template article|report|beamer]
ltx doctor    # verify your TeX toolchain and diagnose common issues

Run ltx --help or ltx <command> --help for the full reference.

Configuration

Every ltx project is described by an ltx.toml at its root:

[project] # for metadata
name = "Rust Memory effeciency"
version = "0.1.0"
author = ["John Deo <johnd@email.com>"]
main = "src/main.tex"
[build]
name = "rust_mem"
engine = "tectonic"
engine_args = [""]

How it compares

	ltx	latexmk	Plain shell scripts
Incremental builds	✅	⚠️ partial	❌
Dependency-aware graph resolution	✅	⚠️ heuristic	❌
Linting	✅	❌	❌
Native Rust engine (Tectonic)	✅	❌	❌
Project scaffolding	✅	❌	❌
Config format	TOML	Perl	shell
Written in	Rust	Perl	—

Project layout

.
├── src/
│   ├── main.tex
│   └── sections/
├── bib/
│   └── references.bib
├── target/          # generated, git-ignored
└── ltx.toml

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please open an issue before starting on a large change so we can align on direction first.

git clone https://github.com/Abdogouhmad/ltx.git
cd ltx
cargo test
cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full guide.

License

Licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0
• MIT license

at your option.

_{Built with 🦀 and ❤️ by me}