knit Rmarkdown moderncv to pdf using makefile with sty file in subdirectory

Question

I am using the moderncv class to create a CV in Rmarkdown. In order to make the cv reproducible out of the box I have included the .cls and .sty files in the root directory. However, in an effort to keep the root directory uncluttered I would prefer to keep all the moderncv related files in a subdirectory (assets/tex/). I am able to access the .cls file using a relative path in the yaml front matter, but I am not able to access the .sty files unless they are in the root directory.

Searching previous questions on stackoverflow I learned the following: (1) keeping .cls and .sty files in nested directories is not recommended. I understand this and would like to do it anyway so that other people can fork my project and be able to knit the cv without having to deal with finding their texmk folder. (2) the solution to my problem seems to involve setting the TEXINPUTS using a Makefile (see this thread and another thread)

I am not very good with Makefiles, but I have managed to get one working that will knit my .Rmd file to pdf without problems, so long as the .sty files are still in root. This is what it looks like currently:

PDF_FILE=my_cv.pdf

all : $(PDF_FILE)
    echo All files are now up to date

clean : 
    rm -f $(PDF_FILE) 

%.pdf : %.Rmd
    Rscript -e 'rmarkdown::render("$<")'

My understanding is that I can set the TEXINPUTS using:

export TEXINPUTS=".:./assets/tex:"

Where "assets/tex" represents the subdirectory where the .sty files are located. I do not know how to incorporate the above code into my makefile so that the .sty files are recognized in the subdirectories and my .Rmd is knit to PDF. In its current state, I get the following error if I remove the .sty files from root and put then in the aforementioned subdirectory:

! LaTeX Error: Command \fax already defined.
           Or name \end... illegal, see p.192 of the manual.

which I assume is occurring because the moderncv class needs---and cannot locate---the relevant .sty files.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 05 '18 at 09:08

You could try to define the environment variable in the make rule:

%.pdf : %.Rmd
    export TEXINPUTS=".:./assets/tex:"
    Rscript -e 'rmarkdown::render("$<")'

Or you could set the environment variable in a set-up chunk in your Rmd file:

```{r setup, include = FALSE}
Sys.setenv(TEXINPUTS=".:./assets/tex:")
```

Note: Not tested due to lack of minimal example.

knit Rmarkdown moderncv to pdf using makefile with sty file in subdirectory

1 Answers1