Makefile for compiling LaTeX into PDF using Rubber

LatexCommon.mk provides a set of common LaTeX compilation targets which make building PDFs from LaTeX document a breeze.

Simple create a Makefile in your document directory and include LatexCommon.mk:

include path/to/LatexCommon.mk

The primary .tex for your document should be specified before including LatexCommon.mk:

TARGET=example

Example use of LatexCommon.mk is provided in the example directory. Simply navigate to the example directory and run make.

Real-world Example

I have a paper I'm working on that I'm building using LatexCommon.mk. My paper's directory comprises:

# Symbolic link to a bibtex input file exported automatically from Mendeley Desktop.
authors.bib
# The LaTeX source for my paper.
dynamic.tex
# The makefile including LatexCommon.mk.
makefile

where makefile contains:

TARGET=dynamic
MATLAB_FIGURE_DIRECTORY=$(HOME)/phd/src/dynamic/paperfigures/figures/
LATEX_INCLUDE_PATHS+=$(MATLAB_FIGURE_DIRECTORY)
ADDITIONAL_DEPS+=$(wildcard $(MATLAB_FIGURE_DIRECTORY)/*.pdf)

include ../../../latex/LatexCommon.mk

authors.bib will be automatically included as a dependency of dynamic.pdf. My paper includes a number of figures that are generated by Matlab then saved as .pdfs in $(HOME)/phd/src/dynamic/paperfigures/figures/; thus I've included them as additional dependencies by appending to the ADDITIONAL_DEPS variable. This means that if I regenerate the figures from Matlab without otherwise changing dynamic.tex a new dynamic.pdf will be built with the new figures.