paper-compile

Paper Compile: LaTeX to Submission-Ready PDF

Compile the LaTeX paper and fix any issues: $ARGUMENTS

Constants

All constants (COMPILER, ENGINE, MAX_COMPILE_ATTEMPTS, VENUE) are defined in the project's CLAUDE.md. Read them from there before proceeding. Page limits are venue-dependent — see CLAUDE.md.

• PAPER_DIR = paper/ — Directory containing LaTeX source files.

Workflow

Step 1: Verify Prerequisites

Check that the compilation environment is ready:

# Check LaTeX installation
which pdflatex && which latexmk && which bibtex

# If not installed, provide instructions:
# macOS: brew install --cask mactex-no-gui
# Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install texlive-full
# Server: conda install -c conda-forge texlive-core

Verify all required files exist:

# Must exist
ls $PAPER_DIR/main.tex

# Should exist
ls $PAPER_DIR/references.bib
ls $PAPER_DIR/sections/*.tex
ls $PAPER_DIR/figures/*.pdf 2>/dev/null || ls $PAPER_DIR/figures/*.png 2>/dev/null

Step 2: First Compilation Attempt

cd $PAPER_DIR

# Clean previous build artifacts
latexmk -C

# Full compilation (pdflatex + bibtex + pdflatex × 2)
latexmk -pdf -interaction=nonstopmode -halt-on-error main.tex 2>&1 | tee compile.log

Step 3: Error Diagnosis and Auto-Fix

If compilation fails, read compile.log and fix common errors:

Missing packages:

! LaTeX Error: File `somepackage.sty' not found.

→ Install via tlmgr install somepackage or remove the \usepackage if unused.

Undefined references:

LaTeX Warning: Reference `fig:xyz' on page 3 undefined

→ Check \label{fig:xyz} exists in the correct figure environment.

Missing figures:

! LaTeX Error: File `figures/fig1.pdf' not found.

→ Check if the file exists with a different extension (.png vs .pdf). Update the \includegraphics path.

Citation undefined:

LaTeX Warning: Citation `smith2024' undefined

→ Add the missing entry to references.bib or fix the citation key.