9 Multiple file LaTeX projects

9.1 Latex-Suite project settings
9.2 Specifying which file to compile

Many LaTeX projects contain multiple source files which are \included from a master file. A typical example of this situation is a directory layout such as the following

thesis/
    main.tex
    abstract.tex
    intro/
        intro.tex
        figures/
            fig1.eps
            fig2.eps
    chapter1/
        chap1.tex
        figures/
            fig1.eps
    conclusion/
        conclusion.tex
        figures/

In the above case, main.tex will typically look like

% file: main.tex
\documentclass{report}
\begin{document}

\input{abstract.tex}
\input{intro/intro.tex}
\input{chapter1/chap1.tex}
\input{conclusion/conclusion.tex}

\end{document}

In such situations, you will need to convey to Latex-Suite that main.tex is the main file which \inputs the other files. This is done by creating an empty file called main.tex.latexmain in the same directory in which main.tex resides. This file is called the master file in this manual. See Tex_MainFileExpression for an alternative way of specifying the master file.

Note

Here main.tex.latexmain is (obviously) a different file from main.tex itself. main.tex need not be renamed. This ofcourse restricts each directory to have a single master file.

Each time Latex-Suite opens a new LaTeX file, it will try to see if it is part of a multiple file project by searching upwards (to the root of the file-system) from the current file's directory to see if it finds a file of the form *.latexmain. If such a file is found, then it is considered that the current file is part of a larger project. The name of the LaTeX master file is inferred directly from the first part of the *.latexmain file as described in the example above.