Minimal TeX Live installation Docker image

The purpose of this image is to have a TeX Live installation with the bare minimum needed to produce Computer Science reports.

This project works thanks to SatoshiPortal's glibc apk builds for alpine linux. Thanks Satoshi!

1. Install Docker
2. Add your user to the Docker group (this is to avoid using sudo each time you need to run a command):

sudo groupadd docker
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Log out and log back in so that your group membership is re-evaluated.

3. Download the image:

docker pull ivanpondal/alpine-latex

1. Change your working directory to the latex project root.
2. Run pdflatex on your main file:

docker run --rm -v $PWD:/workdir:z ivanpondal/alpine-latex pdflatex <TEX_FILE>

To see an example of how this image can be used and extended you can visit docker-alpine-texlive-sample.

If you wish to add your own selection of packages to this image you may extend it by writing a new Dockerfile as follows:

FROM ivanpondal/alpine-latex:2.2.0

RUN apk --no-cache add perl wget && \
	tlmgr install <NEW_PACKAGES> && \
	apk del perl wget

We need to install perl and wget because they're dependencies for tlmgr. By installing and removing them in the same RUN instruction we avoid adding them to the final layer.

Build the image:

docker buildx build --platform linux/arm64,linux/amd64 -t <IMAGE_NAME> --progress=plain .

Alternatively, you may modify the original Dockerfile by altering the additional packages RUN instruction:

# Install additional packages
RUN apk --no-cache add perl wget && \
	tlmgr install <NEW_PACKAGES> bytefield algorithms algorithm2e ec fontawesome && \
	apk del perl wget && \
	mkdir /workdir

Build the image:

docker build . -t <NEW_IMAGE_NAME>