Quick setup for LaTeX using homebrew on Mac OSX. I used BasicTex because MacTeX is a massive file and I can manually manage any additional packages I need using the TeX package manager tlmgr. If you are just getting started with LaTeX and want to use a GUI and some of the other helpful tools then I would still recommend MacTex.
Step 1: Install BasicTex
for this step, I used homebrew, the "missing package manager for macOS". Get homebrew here.
once homebrew is installed and setup, the following commands will install BasicTeX.
brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask
brew cask install basictex --verbose # verbose flag so I can see what is happening.You will have to enter your password at some point. homebrew wont allow you to brew install with sudo.
This should install the basictex files under /Library/TeX/texbin. At this point, quit your terminal session and re-open it. Type the following:
Step 2: Verify the install
which pdflatexif you get the path to pdflatex, /Library/TeX/texbin/pdflatex then you are all set! However, I had to manually add this to my path. Open you favorite terminal editor and add the following to the bottom of your .bash_profile
Step 3: Add BasicTex to your PATH.
# for basictex
export PATH=$PATH:/Library/TeX/texbinThis assigns the variable PATH to $PATH which is whatever else you already have on your PATH, and then appends the path to basictex.
Now restart your terminal (or run
which pdflatextlmgr TeX package manager
I love package managers. tlmgr is the package manager for TeX. It seems like most tlmgr commands have to be run as sudo. For example, here is how you install minted, for source code highlighting in LaTeX.
sudo tlmgr install mintedMake sure you
pip install pygments