Setting tectonic (LaTeX compiler) doesn't work

Setting tectonic to the LaTeX build compiler doesn’t work. The extension automatically adds flags to the command it does not recognize and fails.

I also can’t find the part of the extension responsible for setting these flags. Any ideas?

[ian-r-rose]

I think it would be reasonable to add an escape hatch for a completely user-customizable command sequence. A config for disabling bibtex also sounds like a good idea.

[RealYHD]

Okay, I have a working prototype on my private git server. Mind you, I call it a working prototype since I’ve only lightly tested it with tectonic, but it’s a simple enough implementation that it should work with most other compilers.

To make this work, I’ve added two additional configuration options (essentially exactly the two configuration options @ian-r-rose mentioned):

• The option to manually override the built-in arguments with a configuration option c.LatexConfig.manual_cmd_args. It takes a list of arguments with placeholders for the latex file name ({filename}), and whether or not synctex should be used ({synctex}). Using it with tectonic goes something like this: c.LatexConfig.manual_cmd_args = ['{filename}.tex', '-Z', 'shell-escape']. Of course, c.LatexConfig.latex_command = 'tectonic' is still needed.
• The second configuration option I added was taken from @s-weigand’s note about bibtex. I’m going to be honest, I’ve never used bibtex at all before, but all I did was add a simple boolean toggle that disables the bibtex command sequence alterations. I plan on using bibtex in the very near future so although it’s currently untested, I’ll report back on this situation.

I did these changes as a rush job, and I have no experience developing extensions for JupyterLab whatsoever (I have more experience in python, but I feel most comfortable in slightly lower-level languages). That being said, I’d love to contribute these changes if given the opportunity and approval after some more rigorous testing.