An extremely fast LaTeX project manager, written in Rust.

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ltx is a project manager for LaTeX documents. It resolves your document graph, drives latex/xelatex/lualatex and biber/bibtex in the right order, watches your sources 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

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
• 👀 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
• 🔌 Engine-agnostic — works with pdflatex, xelatex, and lualatex
• 🧵 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/abderrahmanbenani/ltx.git
cd ltx
cargo install --path .

ltx requires a working TeX distribution (TeX Live, MiKTeX, or MacTeX) 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 pdflatex|xelatex|lualatex] [--release]
ltx watch [--open]
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]
name = "my-paper"
main = "src/main.tex"
engine = "pdflatex"

[build]
output-dir = "build"
bibliography = true

[watch]
open-viewer = true

How it compares

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

Project layout

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

_{Built with 🦀 and ❤️ by Abderrahman}