Author: Eiko

Tags: Alpine Linux, Texlive, Install

This document describes how to install texlive on any linux system, in this case alpine linux. The installation is done manually, without the use of the package manager. This is useful if you want to install something that does not come with in the official repositories. For my case the texlive-full package in alpine does not come with certain utilities like dvisgvm which I need. For this case, a manual installation is preferred. I have documented the process, before you install, you can uninstall the package manager version.

Install Texlive

• Download the official installer

  wget http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/install-tl-unx.tar.gz
  tar -xvf install-tl-unx.tar.gz
  cd install-tl- # put the version number here or press tab to autocomplete

  run the installer as root

  sudo ./install-tl

• Follow the instruction on the screen to choose your plan. If full installation (which takes 8.7GB) is too much you can start with the medium plan and customize the installation later.

Add Texlive to PATH

Add the following to your ~/.bashrc (for most people) or ~/.profile file for Alpine Linux.

export PATH=/usr/local/texlive/2024/bin/x86_64-linux:$PATH

the exact path can be different, there should be a hint printed on the screen after the installation.

Trouble Shooting

If you get errors like this when compiling a latex document

! LaTeX Error: File `standalone.cls' not found.

You can install the package by running the package manager that comes with your texlive installation. For example, to install standalone package, run

tlmgr install standalone

similarly I installed xypic, tikz-cd when I see errors like lacking some sty files.