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Installation

Prerequisites

  • Rust 1.86+ — install via rustup

That’s it. LTX compiles with Tectonic, a self-contained, native-Rust TeX engine — no separate TeX distribution is required. The ltx build default uses tectonic and downloads its TeX Live bundle on first use.

Optional: if you’d rather use pdflatex, xelatex, or lualatex (or need a package not yet supported by Tectonic), install a traditional distribution and make sure its binaries are on your PATH:

Install via Cargo

cargo install ltx

This downloads the latest published version from crates.io and compiles a release binary.

Install from source

git clone https://github.com/Abdogouhmad/ltx.git
cd ltx
cargo install --path .

This builds and installs the current main branch.

Verify installation

ltx --help
ltx --version
ltx code --lexer   # list the lexer diagnostic codes

You should see the CLI help text, the installed version, and the code table.

Platform notes

Linux

No special steps. If you use a traditional TeX distribution alongside Tectonic, ensure its binaries are on your PATH (TeX Live installs to /usr/local/texlive/… by default).

macOS

If you installed MacTeX, the binaries are at /Library/TeX/texbin/. Add this to your PATH if it isn’t already:

export PATH="/Library/TeX/texbin:$PATH"

Windows

MiKTeX or TeX Live should register themselves on the system PATH during installation.

Next steps