latex-make enters debian

For all of you folks that always complain about how difficult it is to create latex documents with those complex Makefiles compiling figures, linking eps’s, doing bad works to generate pdf or ps automatically, latex-make is here.

It’s a makefile include file to help you compile and track dependencies of a latex document. For example, if you want to compile a latex-only document (of one or more files), you only have to create a Makefile with one line. Imagine the master tex file is called mydocument.tex. Then you would write a Makefile with two lines like this:

LU_MASTERS=mydocument.tex

include LaTeX.mk

If you want to state which kind of outputs you want it to compile by default, you only have to state the flavors (PS, DVIPDF and/or PDF):

FLAVORS=DVIPDF

And about the figures. If you have the figures of your document in figures directory, you only have to add:

LU_mydocument_GPATH=figures

There are more interesting points. It adds a module to handle .fig files and bibliographies.