[OS X TeX] Disaster

[M. Tamer Özsu]

Dropbox on MacOS does understand symbolic links — I am using it daily. It does not understand them on Windows and I haven’t checked Linux.

I have everything sitting in Dropbox and run latex as I normally would; I have not noticed that Dropbox is straining the system — although it is syncing all of the files. 

I have reduced the number of auxiliary files, though. I normally have one master file and a bunch of \input{} commands for each section/chapter/whatever preceeded by \includonly{} so I can only typeset and focus on the part that I am working at the moment. Normally this generates additional auxiliary files for the inputted (?) files. However, someone made the suggestion to do the following instead, which eliminates auxiliary files for the parts and only generates auxiliary files for the root file. I have been using this with good effect.

- In the preamble I have the following:

\NewDocumentCommand{\commoninput}{m}
 {
  \clist_if_in:NnT \g_ozsu_common_include_clist { #1 }
   {
    \input{#1}
   }
 }
\clist_new:N \g_ozsu_common_include_clist



- Then in the body I have

\commoninclude{%
file-1

,file-2
,file-3
}

and 

\commoninput{file-1}
\commoninput{file-2}
\commoninput{file-3}

I comment out the files in \commoninclude that I don’t need to include in that particular compilation. This gives me the minimum number of auxiliary files while allowing me to focus on the part of the document that I need to. And the entire document folder sites in my ~/Documents directory with a symlink to it in the ~/Dropbox directory.
 
I am very happy with the way it works for me.

==Tamer
--
M. Tamer Özsu
Professor, Cheriton School of Computer Science
Associate Dean (Research), Faculty of Mathematics
University of Waterloo
https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~tozsu 
+1-519-888-4043






On 2015-08-26, 11:16 AM, "MacOSX-TeX on behalf of Ettore Aldrovandi" <macosx-tex-bounces at email.esm.psu.edu on behalf of ealdrov at mail.math.fsu.edu> wrote:

>
>> On Aug 26, 2015, at 10:43, Martin Wilhelm Leidig <listwatch at moss.in-berlin.de> wrote:
>> 
>> Am 2015-08-25 um 00:14 schrieb Markus Klyver:
>>> However, that requires you to pause ans unpause the sync for every re-compilation you make, and believe me: a thesis require many such changes.
>> 
>> 
>> Why so complicated?  Just put your working directory (where all those secondary files are being fuddled around) off Dropbox, create a softlink (_no_ MacOS alias) pointing to your PDF and put just that link into your Dropbox folder.  Thus, DB doesn’t even get a glimpse of *.aux etc.
>> 
>
>Dropbox doesn’t really understand links. On other machines  that sync with your DB folder you get an actual PDF file. Now, if you edit THAT synced copy, your original link gets replaced by an actual copy of the file.
>
>—Ettore
>
>--
>Ettore Aldrovandi
>Department of Mathematics, Florida State University
>1017 Academic Way                *    http://www.math.fsu.edu/~ealdrov
>Tallahassee, FL 32306-4510, USA * * aldrovandi at math dot fsu dot edu
>
>----------- Please Consult the Following Before Posting -----------
>TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
>List Reminders and Etiquette: https://www.esm.psu.edu/~gray/tex/
>List Archives: http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.comp.tex.macosx
>                https://email.esm.psu.edu/pipermail/macosx-tex/
>TeX on Mac OS X Website: http://mactex-wiki.tug.org/
>List Info: https://email.esm.psu.edu/mailman/listinfo/macosx-tex