Installing MacTex and TeXlipse on Mac OS X

25/02/2009

tex_logoTeXlipse is an Eclipse Plugin that allows you to have control of your Tex files, compile them, and convert them to PDF. It runs through Eclipse and its very easy to use. Using Eclipse as a tool for Tex is nice because you can use all the other Eclipse’s tools to be more productive(CVS, SVN, Mylin etc).

The only requirement to install Texlipse, is to have a Tex toolchain already installed on your Mac. The recommended way to have the whole toolchain, is to install MacTex. In order to install it, just visit http://www.tug.org/mactex/ and install it(the file you are about to download is about 1.2 GBs!).

After you have installed MacTex, you have to install TeXlipse.

To do that, just create a new “Update Site” with this link: http://texlipse.sourceforge.net/ and tick the texlipse checkbox to install it. Hit “Install” and you will get a nice TeXlipse installation to your eclipse.

Fire up eclipse (or restart it) and you are ready to configure TeXlipse. Go to “Eclipse=>Preferences”:

step0

Browse to “TeXlipse=>Builder” Settings, and this should show up:

step2

Then, you just have to point to the directory where your TexMac bin folder exists. In my case(it should be the same with you) was “/usr/local/texlive/2008/bin/universal-darwin”:

step41

Then all the paths in the list should be automatically filled:

step5

If the paths have not been automatically filled, just fill them (on e at a time, using the path I provided). After you finish with this, just hit “Apply” and the OK and you hopefully, you have configured your TeXlipse. Create a new project and put some Tex files in it.

Then Right Click your project and choose “Properties”:

step6

In the propertied Dialog, set the “Build Commands” to “latex+dvips+ps2pdf”:

step7

Hit Apply and OK and you are ready. Just hit “Apple+b” to build your PDF file.

Let me know if something wasn’t as expected!

There are 6 comments in this article:

  1. 13/04/2009Dan Ford say:

    Thanks for the blog, I just went down this path and you saved me some time. I still have one problem left. When I try to preview, I get an error that it can’t find Adobe Reader. I’ve configured the path correctly, I think. I have Texclipse installed on Windows and have things properly configured there, so I have some experience, but I’m new to the Mac and must be missing something simple.

    Any ideas?

    Thanks
    Dan

  2. 14/04/2009Asterios Katsifodimos say:

    Hi,

    I am glad I helped!

    The problem with acrobat is that it gets installed in a folder that contains spaces. For some reason, the texlipse plugin doesn’t like those spaces. So, just remove the spaces from the path to Adobe Reader folder and point the path to /path/to/reader.app/Contents/MacOS/AdobeReader. This is the file that Mac OS X really executes when you execute the .app file.

    In more detail, what I did is the following:
    1. Install Adobe Acrobat Reader
    2. Go to the Applications folder and rename the “Adobe Reader” folder to “AdobeReader” (just remove the space).
    3. Rename the .app file into something that again doesn’t contain spaces. e.g. acroread.app
    4. Set the path to /path/to/acroread.app/Contents/MacOS/AdobeReader in texlipse.
    5. Run the preview!

    let me know if this worked for you :)
    regards,
    Asterios

  3. 28/07/2009Xiaoyu say:

    Thanks for your instruction. I have two makeindex.exe commands that have to be executed while building, one is for generating an index, the other is for nomencl, Is there a way where i can define my own build command, such as pdflatex+bibtex+makeindex+makeindex+pdflatex?

  4. 10/03/2010Jesus say:

    Hey guy! I was looking in Google how to install TeXclipse in Mac (not exactly what you have explained in the post, but more about MacTex) and I appeared in your webpage, quite funny… xD Update it more often man, don’t give up!!!

  5. 17/05/2010murat say:

    Thank you very much! I am quite new to OSX and had some problems to configure the viewers in TeXlipse. I was not aware that I was needing to give the full path to Skim, including the part in the Package. Now it works beatifully! Thanks a lot!

  6. 29/07/2010nick say:

    That “build commands” menu isn’t showing up for me. Any ideas what I’m missing?

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