solrub

Build the student, solution and rubric PDFs of a LaTeX assignment.

One .tex source carries all three copies. \sol marks what only the answer key shows and \rub what only the grading rubric shows; each copy is a pdflatex run defining a different subset of them.

pip install solrub

Use

solrub quiz1a              # quiz1a.pdf, quiz1a_sol.pdf, quiz1a_rub.pdf
solrub quiz1*              # every version at once
solrub quiz1/              # every document in a folder
solrub --no-sol --no-rub blank

All three copies are the default; --no-sol and --no-rub opt out.

Arguments are files, globs or directories, with the .tex suffix optional. Globs are expanded by the tool rather than left to the shell, so quiz1* works the same on Windows. Two filters keep a wide pattern honest: sibling builds (quiz1a.pdf, quiz1a_sol.pdf) collapse onto the .tex they came from, and a fragment with no \documentclass is skipped.

The pdflatex transcript is hidden, leaving one line per document:

==> quiz1a.tex
    quiz1a.pdf  quiz1a_sol.pdf  quiz1a_rub.pdf

A failure prints the error pdflatex reported and keeps that document's .log, but does not stop the rest of the batch; the failures are listed at the end and the exit status is non-zero. -v restores the full transcript.

Counting points

-p sums the points per problem, using sum-pts: pip install "solrub[pts]".

How a count is written varies by repo, so the patterns live beside the documents rather than in this tool. Drop a solrub.toml at the root of a problem repo and it governs every assignment under it:

# problems read:  \prob{[20 pts (8, 12)]: Bayes Net}
[points]
left = '\['
right = '\]'
prefix = ' *\\prob'
points = 'pts?'
remove = ['\(\d+.?\d* each\)', '\((\d+.?\d*,? ?)+\)', '\{', '\}', ':']

Anything omitted keeps its default, so a repo writing [20 points] rather than [20 pts] needs only:

[points]
points = 'points'

That one is worth stating explicitly: the default pts? does not match points, and rather than failing it matches the pts inside a (4 pts each) split, silently returning a total that is too low.

Points are counted from the source, so -p still reports on a document that failed to build.

In the document

Three macros divide the source. \answer and \rubric are hidden by default and revealed by their build; \exam is the reverse, student-only content such as the blank space left for the work, dropped from both keys.

\newcommand{\answer}[1]{}
\newcommand{\rubric}[1]{}
\newcommand{\exam}[1]{#1}

\ifdefined\sol
  \renewcommand{\answer}[1]{#1}
  \renewcommand{\exam}[1]{}
\fi

\ifdefined\rub
  \renewcommand{\rubric}[1]{#1}
  \renewcommand{\exam}[1]{}
\fi

Requires

pdflatex on the PATH, and Python 3.9 or newer.