tartex 0.11.1

Tar all files needed to re-compile your LaTeX project

tartex

🧵 Minimal, reproducible tarballs for your LaTeX projects.

TarTeX is a command-line utility to generate a tarball containing all and only the source files needed to (re)compile your LaTeX project elsewhere.

It aims to produce arXiv and journal-ready bundles with zero clutter.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Installation
• Usage
• Typical Workflows
• License
• Related
• Similar utilities

Features

• 📦 Produces compact, reproducible tarballs with a minimal list of files
• ✨ Compatible with arXiv and most journal submission rules
• 💨 Fast: caches list of dependencies and avoids re-compilation unless necessary or forced
• 📸 Git integration: snapshot files into tarball directly from Git revision (--git-rev)
• 🔍 Auto-detects re-compilation processing mode (pdf/ps) from project
• 🔏 Leaves your LaTeX project directory unchanged
• 🕵️ Optional check to ensure final tarball contains all necessary files
• 🖇️ Supports shell completions for bash, zsh, and fish

Installation

Note: If re-compilation of sources is required (cache file not generated or accessible), or is explicitly requested (-F/--force-recompile), you must have latexmk and pdflatex, as well as a full LaTeX env installed to allow compilation of your LaTeX project. TarTeX does not include any system-wide files, such as standard TeX style files, classes, etc. in the tar file. This is also required for the check options (--check/--only-check).

Using pipx

This is the easy way to install tagged releases.

pipx install tartex

From GitHub sources:

Compile using hatch to generate a wheel, which may be then installed using pipx as follows:

git clone https://github.com/badshah400/tartex.git
cd tartex
hatch build
pipx install ./dist/*.whl

Usage

Supported OS: Potentially cross-platform, but tested only on Linux for now.

usage: tartex [OPTIONS] FILENAME

Build a tarball including all source files needed to compile your LaTeX project
(version 0.11.1).

positional arguments:
  FILENAME                 input file name [.fls|.tex] (with/without extension)

common options:
  -h, --help               show this help message and exit
  -V, --version            print tartex version and exit
  -c, --check              Check if tarball has all files needed for compiling
  -C, --only-check         Only check and print detailed report; no tarball
  -g, --git-rev=[REV]      add git tree files at revision REV (default: HEAD)
  -l, --list, --dry-run    print list of files to include and quit
  -o, --output=NAME[.EXT]  output tar filename; 'EXT' sets re-compression mode,
                           if one of 'bz2', 'gz' (default), or 'xz'
  --overwrite              overwrite output tarball if necessary
  -p, --packages           add used (La)TeX package names as json file
  -s, --summary            print a summary at the end
  -v, --verbose            increase log verbosity (-v, -vv, etc.)

options for additional file inclusion/exclusion in tar:
  -a, --add="PATTERNs"     include additional files matching glob PATTERN;
                           separate multiple PATTERNs using commas
  -b, --bib                find and add bib file to tarball
  --with-pdf               add existing/generated final output PDF
  -x, --excl="PATTERNs"    exclude file names matching PATTERNS

options for latexmk processing (ignored for 'git-rev'):
  -F, --force-recompile    force (La)TeX re-compile; cache use/update disabled
  --latexmk-tex=TEXMODE    force latexmk processing mode; TEXMODE is one of:
                           dvi, lualatex, luatex, pdf, pdflua, ps, xdv, xelatex

options for tar re-compression (mutually conflicting); over-rides .EXT in '-o':
  -j, --bzip2              bzip2 (.bz2) re-compression
  -J, --xz                 lzma (.xz) re-compression
  -z, --gzip               gzip (.gz) re-compression

options for shell TAB completion:
  --completion             print shell completion guides for tartex
  --bash-completions       install bash completions for tartex
  --fish-completions       install fish completions for tartex
  --zsh-completions        install zsh completions for tartex

Note: If the main input file specified on the cmdline has an extension '.fls', previously generated by, say latex -record or latexmk, then tartex will directly use that to determine which input files to include in the tarball. Otherwise, tartex will recompile your project using latexmk in a temporary dir and use the .fls file generated there to determine necessary dependencies. To be precise, recompilation will invoke:

latexmk -f -<texmode> -cd -outdir=<tmpdir> -interaction=nonstopmode filename

texmode is one of pdf or ps by default, as detemined from the contents of the source dir. It may be overridden by the --latexmk-tex option.

Using with --git-rev

When you specify a Git revision (via --git-rev), tartex only includes files that are tracked by Git at that revision. This means:

• Files ignored by .gitignore (e.g. *.aux, *.log, build artifacts, temp files) are automatically excluded, since they are not tracked by Git.
• No re-compilation of TeX sources (unless using one of the check options).
• No checking or updating of cache file, otherwise used to track input file changes.
• No need to maintain a separate exclude list.
• Output tarball reflects the exact state of the project at the chosen revision, ensuring reproducibility.
• Unless the output tar filename is explicitly specified by the user (via -o/--output), a git short-ref or tag-id will be appended to it. For example, main-git.a97023f.tar.gz corresponding to a git rev short-ref of a97023f. If the specified revision points to a tag, the tarfile is named main-<TAG>.tar.gz.

Note: When running without --git-rev, tartex applies its own LaTeX-aware exclusion rules (e.g. skipping .aux, .log, .fdb_latexmk), to avoid including transient build files in your archive.

Typical workflows

Current Draft vs. Git Revision

TarTeX can be used in two different workflows, based on how you manage your LaTeX project. By default, TarTeX archives your project at the current draft level as it appears in the source dir. This is useful when your files are not version controlled, or you simply want to tar (and send?) your source files at their current — potentially uncommitted — git state.

If, instead, your LaTeX project is version controlled using Git, and have a clean working tree, you can generate a tarball of files in your git tree as they would have appeared at a specific revision. In this case, you can target a Git revision by specifying --git-rev=[REV] as an option to TarTeX. REV defaults to HEAD if left unspecified. This will generate a tarball including all source files tracked by git (git ls-tree -r) and append a meaningful tag, indicative of the revision, to the final tar filename. This is useful, for instance, when you are close to a version for submission and tagging your git repository meaningfully; using TarTeX will produce tarballs with names like foo-v0.9.tar.gz and bar-v1.0.tar.gz for projects at git tags v0.9 and v1.0 respectively. Within the same project, this is also useful to tar two different snapshots to send to your collaborators, for instance, to extract and run latexdiff on them.

The table below highlights the key differences:

Feature	Current Draft (default)	Git Revision (--git-rev)
Source of files	Your working directory	A specific Git commit, tag, or branch
Uncommitted changes	Included	Ignored
Reproducibility	Depends on current state	Guaranteed (historical snapshot)
Typical use cases	Submitting latest draft, sharing with collaborators	Packaging for journal submission, archiving published versions
Command example	tartex main.tex → main.tar.gz	tartex main.tex --git-rev v1.2 → main-v1.2.tar.gz

License

tartex is distributed under the terms of the MIT license.

Related

• nautilus-tartex is an extension for the GNOME Files app nautilus that adds a context menu item for one-click archiving of LaTeX project files using TarTeX.

Similar utilities

• bundledoc is a post-processor for the snapshot package that bundles together all the classes, packages and files needed to build a given LaTeX document.

Acknowledgment and AI usage disclosure

Some features, like the --git-rev option — but no actual code itself — were motivated by discussions with Gemini AI.