LaTeX Codespace Template

This is a LaTeX Codespace Configuation Template, which is to create a working LaTeX environment as efficient as possible.

Usage

1. Create your own repo using this repo as a template.
2. Setup codespace prebuilds in Settings/Codespace.
3. Wait for your codespace prebuilding task complete.
4. Create a codespace from the repo.

Features

• Full TeX Live installation (see here)
• bibtex support - automatically compile .bib files
• latexindent support - automatically formatting on save
• texcount support - automatically count words on save

Submit an issue if you believe an extension is essential to this environment.

Extensions Included

• LaTeX Workshop
• GitLens — Git supercharged
• Trailing Spaces
• Rewrap
• Material Icon Theme
• Material Theme

Additional Packages

• libfont - required by XeLaTeX
• Python 3

Customize

Configuration in .devcontainer/Dockerfile and .devcontainer/devcontainer.json are my usual usage. However, you can customize packages, extensions and setting in the following steps if needed.

Add additional packages to your codespace

The image is based on Ubunut 20.04 LTS which uses apt and apt-get to manage packages. Just add the following code to .devcontainer/Dockerfile if you want to customize packages included in the prebuilt image.

RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install your-package -y

Add additional extensions to your codespace

Extensions and settings configuration are stored under .devcontainer/devcontainer.json. If you want to add your own extension, follow the following steps:

1. Find the extension in Visual Studio Code or in Visual Studio Code Marketplace

2. Get the extension ID: In Visual Studio Code, right click on the extension and click "Copy Extension ID". In Visual Studio Code Marketplace, you have to go to the URL section of your browser, the extension ID is displayed in the following manner.

    https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=<extension-id>
   

3. Add the extension ID to the extensions field in .devcontainer/devcontainer.json.

    "extensions": [
        ...
        "<extension-id>",
    ],

After these steps, you've successfully added an extension to the codespace. You may want to import your preferences from you local Visual Studio Code workspace.

Import additional setting from settings.json

This step is relatively simple - just open your settings.json and copy the related settings entry to settings field in .devcontainer/devcontainer.json.

Customizing themes and icon themes

First make sure you have added the theme in extensions entry. Update the workbench.colorTheme and workbench.iconTheme entry in .devcontainer/devcontainer.json.

Acknowledgements

The template is based on qdm12/latexdevcontainer.