Extending TeX Live

It's possible to extend an existing TeX Live image using a new Dockerfile and configure the application to use the new image.

Here we offer some guidelines to install new packages or fonts, but the configuration of a custom image is not covered by our support terms.

The TeX Live images receive infrequent updates. We suggest rebuilding custom images when upgrading Server Pro.

The following sections apply to Server Pro and Sandboxed Compiles only.

Installing and updating new packages

You can use tlmgr commands such as tlmgr install and tlmgr update to manage Tex Live packages as in the following example:

FROM quay.io/sharelatex/texlive-full:2023.1

RUN tlmgr update --force ebproof

Using tlmgr in an older TeX Live image

By default tlmgr downloads resources from the latest TeX Live release. When patching an older TeX Live image, the downloads need to be switched to the respective archive. See the list in https://www.tug.org/historic/ for mirrors of archives.

FROM quay.io/sharelatex/texlive-full:2022.1

RUN tlmgr option repository <MIRROR>/systems/texlive/<YEAR>/tlnet-final
# e.g. RUN tlmgr option repository ftp://tug.org/historic/systems/texlive/2022/tlnet-final

RUN tlmgr update --force ebproof

Installing new fonts

There are different procedures to install new fonts in a Tex Live distribution, and installing a custom font might require several steps. Checking the instructions to install TeX fonts in the official Tex Live documentation is probably a good starting point.

The following Dockerfile shows an example of installing a TrueType font over an existing Tex Live 2022 image:

FROM quay.io/sharelatex/texlive-full:2022.1

COPY ./myfonts/*.ttf /usr/share/fonts/truetype/myfont/

# rebuild font information cache
RUN fc-cache

Configuring Server Pro to use the new images

Use the name quay.io/sharelatex/texlive-full and a custom tag to build the new image, as in:

docker build -t quay.io/sharelatex/texlive-full:2023.1-custom

We can now configure Server Pro to use the new 2023.1-custom image updating the TEX_LIVE_DOCKER_IMAGE and ALL_TEX_LIVE_DOCKER_IMAGES environment variables:

TEX_LIVE_DOCKER_IMAGE: "quay.io/sharelatex/texlive-full:2023.1-custom"
ALL_TEX_LIVE_DOCKER_IMAGES: "quay.io/sharelatex/texlive-full:2023.1,quay.io/sharelatex/texlive-full:2023.1-custom"

In the example above new projects are set by default to use the new 2023.1-custom image, while 2023.1 is still available for when it's needed.