Docker Tectonic with Biber

A tiny docker image with a working tectonic latex engine and biber with a primed cache.

• Visit my page on docker hub at: https://hub.docker.com/r/dxjoke/tectonic-docker/
• Visit my page on github at: https://github.com/WtfJoke/tectonic-docker

Getting the image

docker pull dxjoke/tectonic-docker

Only ~75MB compressed.

A fully working latex engine. Packages that are not in the cache will be downloaded on demand.

Example: Gitlab CI

Create a .gitlab-ci.yml with the following content for very fast pdf builds.

pdf:
  image: dxjoke/tectonic-docker
  script:
    - tectonic --keep-intermediates --reruns 0 main.tex
    - biber main
    - tectonic main.tex
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - main.pdf

Example: Gitlab CI (without biber)

In case you dont need biber, you simply ommit the first two script calls. Eg.

pdf:
  image: dxjoke/tectonic-docker
  script:
    - tectonic main.tex
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - main.pdf

Example: Travis CI

Create a .travis.yml file with, assuming the main tex file to be main.tex. If your main.tex file is in a subfolder (for example src/main.tex), adjust the second line to src=$TRAVIS_BUILD_DIR/mysubfolder (eg src=$TRAVIS_BUILD_DIR/src)

sudo: required

services:
  - docker

script:
 - docker run --mount src=$TRAVIS_BUILD_DIR,target=/usr/src/tex,type=bind dxjoke/tectonic-docker
  /bin/sh -c "tectonic --keep-intermediates --reruns 0 main.tex; biber main; tectonic main.tex"

Example: Travis CI (without biber)

In case you dont need biber, you simply use this config with a slightly adjusted docker run:

sudo: required

services:
  - docker

script:
 - docker run --mount src=$TRAVIS_BUILD_DIR,target=/usr/src/tex,type=bind dxjoke/tectonic-docker
  /bin/sh -c "tectonic main.tex"

Priming the cache

After building tectonic, it is run on the tex files in this repo to download all the common files from the tectonic bundle. These files are bundled in the docker image

Running locally

On windows:

docker run -it -v c:/mytex/folder/thesis:/data dxjoke/tectonic-docker

On linux:

docker run -it -v /home/user/mytex/folder/thesis:/data dxjoke/tectonic-docker

Afterwards you can cd into /data and run tectonic/biber as you wish. Eg:

cd /data
tectonic --keep-intermediates --reruns 0 main.tex
biber main
tectonic main.tex