LaTeX-Workshop: Cannot compile .tex files on MacOS

Description

Compiling of the .tex files will not work, so I am not able to use the workflow in my VSCode on MacOS. I suspect this might be related to the location of my files, which are on iCloud Drive, so the path might be a bit ‘ugly’.

This is the error message I get:

Latexmk: applying rule 'pdflatex'...
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.18 (TeX Live 2017) (preloaded format=pdflatex)
 restricted \write18 enabled.
entering extended mode
! I can't find file `"/Users/ahmet/Library/Mobile Documents/com"'.
<to be read again> 
                   \protect 
<*> "/Users/ahmet/Library/Mobile Documents/com~
                                               apple~CloudDocs/Southampton/P...
(Press Enter to retry, or Control-D to exit)
Please type another input file name
! Emergency stop.
<to be read again> 
                   \protect 
<*> "/Users/ahmet/Library/Mobile Documents/com~
                                               apple~CloudDocs/Southampton/P...
!  ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!
Transcript written on texput.log.
=== TeX engine is 'pdfTeX'
Latexmk: Errors, so I did not complete making targets

I have tried quite a few things:

removing all whitespace from the complete path to the file
creating a symbolic link, so ~/Paper/ is the directory where all .tex files are located
tried hardcoding the path in the workflow in settings
tried creating an alias command and just putting that in the workflow settings without any arguments

Whatever I do, the error appears. I am able to run the command for latexmk manually from the terminal, so if I run latexmk -synctex=1 -interaction=nonstopmode -file-line-error -pdf -f ~/Paper/Thesis.tex the file gets built.

Expected behavior

I expect a PDF to be generated, that the compiling process is completed.

Actual behavior

There is an error message, with the log that I have showed above.

Log messages

LaTeX Workshop Output

file: 'file:///Users/ahmet/Library/Mobile%20Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Southampton/ProjectPrep/MScProject/Code/novelchain/Paper/Thesis.tex' severity: 'Error' message: 'I can't find file `"/Users/ahmet/Library/Mobile Documents/com"' <to be read again> \protect <*> "/Users/ahmet/Library/Mobile Documents/com~ apple~CloudDocs/Southampton/P... (Press Enter to retry, or Control-D to exit) Please type another input file name ! Emergency stop. <to be read again> \protect <*> "/Users/ahmet/Library/Mobile Documents/com~ apple~CloudDocs/Southampton/P... ! ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced! Transcript written on texput.log. === TeX engine is 'pdfTeX' Latexmk: Errors, so I did not complete making targets ' at: '1,1' source: 'LaTeX'

Developer Tools Console

Additional Information

I am using MacOS X, latest version, 10.12.6.

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 7 years ago
Reactions: 2
Comments: 29 (14 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

Here’s mine:

"latex-workshop.latex.recipes": [
	{
		"name": "latexmk",
		"tools": ["cd_to_cwd", "latexmk"]
	},
	{
		"name": "pdflatex -> bibtex -> pdflatex*2",
		"tools": ["cd_to_cwd", "pdflatex", "bibtex", "pdflatex", "pdflatex"]
	}
],
"latex-workshop.latex.tools": [
	{
		"name": "cd_to_cwd",
		"command": "cd",
		"args": ["%DIR%"]
	},
	{
		"name": "latexmk",
		"command": "latexmk",
		"args": [
			"-synctex=1",
			"-interaction=nonstopmode",
			"-file-line-error",
			"-pdf",
			"%DOCFILE%"
		]
	},
	{
		"name": "pdflatex",
		"command": "pdflatex",
		"args": [
			"-synctex=1",
			"-interaction=nonstopmode",
			"-file-line-error",
			"%DOCFILE%"
		]
	},
	{
		"name": "bibtex",
		"command": "bibtex",
		"args": ["%DOCFILE%"]
	}
],

The key is that a) the first recipe listed is used by default; b) the recipe used has to contain the cd tool.

rben01 on Sep 16, 2018

Another Workaround

Create a symbolic link to the iCloud folder, for example:

$ ln -s "~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/" iCloud

Open Visual Studio Code on that folder without following the symbolic link (a feature new to 1.28), for example:
```
$ code iCloud/Research/papers
```

leafac on Oct 7, 2019

For me this works:

“latex-workshop.latex.toolchain”: [ {“command”: “cd”, “args” : [“%DIR%”] }, {“command”: “pdflatex”, “args”: [ “-synctex=1”, “-interaction=nonstopmode”, “-file-line-error”, “%DOCFILE%” ] } Then the pdflatex command does not have tildes in its argument anymore.

ps sorry for duplicating before.

Mollenboot on Oct 13, 2017

Would it be possible for LaTeX-Workshop to automatically cd into the compilation directory before compiling, rather than specify the full path to the file? This would eliminate this problem (which I understand is caused by the latex command). @Mollenboot’s fix works, but is a bit annoying, especially since it had to be reworked for the new toolchain format, and may need to be reworked again in the future.

rben01 on Aug 11, 2018

@ashthespy Let me check how it works for this extension. I never noticed problems, but this can because my tex project is usually small enough.

James-Yu on Sep 4, 2017