TexMan: A Rust-Based Package Manager for LaTeX

texman is a lightweight, command-line package manager for TeX Live, written in Rust. It allows you to install, update, remove, and manage LaTeX packages efficiently across multiple profiles, with support for backups and detailed package searches.

Features

• Package Management: Install, update, remove, and list LaTeX packages from the TeX Live repository.
• Profiles: Create and switch between isolated TeX environments (profiles).
• Backups: Create, list, restore, and remove backups of your active profile with timestamps and package counts.
• Search: Search packages by name, short description, long description, or dependencies.
• Clean: Remove unused downloaded files and optionally all backups.
• Parallel Parsing: Fast TLPDB parsing with rayon for multi-core performance.
• Incremental Parsing: Caches parsed TLPDB data for quick startup.

Installation

Prerequisites

• Rust (1.70+ recommended) and Cargo (install via rustup).
• A working internet connection to fetch the TeX Live package database (TLPDB).

Pre-built Binaries

Download the appropriate binary for your platform from the Releases page:

• macOS (x86_64): texman-macos-x86_64
• Linux (x86_64, glibc): texman-linux-x86_64
• Linux (x86_64, musl): texman-linux-x86_64-musl

Extract and move to a directory in your PATH:

chmod +x texman-<platform>
sudo mv texman-<platform> /usr/local/bin/texman

Build from Source

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/amirhosseinghanipour/texman.git
cd texman

2. Build and install:

cargo build --release
sudo cp target/release/texman /usr/local/bin/

Usage

Basic Commands

• Install a package:

texman install babel --profile minimal

• List installed packages:

texman list

• Update packages:

texman update

• Remove a package:

texman remove babel

• Get package info:

texman info babel

Profile Management

• Create a profile:

texman profile create myprofile

• Switch profiles:

texman profile switch myprofile

• List profiles:

texman profile list

• Remove a profile:

texman proile remove myprofile

Backup Management

• Create a backup:

texman backup create mybackup

• List backups:

texman backup list

• Restore a backup:

texman restore mybackup

• Remove a backup:

texman backup remove mybacup

Search

• Search by name:

texman search latex

• Search with descriptions or dependencies:

texman search latex --description --longdesc --depends

Cleaup

• Remove unused files:

texman clean

• Remove all backups too:

texman clean --backups

Configuration

• Storage: Packages, profiles, and backups are stored in ~/.texman/.
• Database: SQLite database at ~/.texman/db/texman.sqlite tracks installed packages and backups.
• TLPDB Cache: Cached at ~/.texman/db/tlpdb.txt and tlpdb.bin, refreshed every 24 hours.

Supported Platforms

• macOS (x86_64)
• Linux (x86_64, glibc and musl-based distros like Arch, Ubuntu, Fedora)

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please submit issues or pull requests to GitHub.