Relative paths in LaTeX.

Recently, I started to gather the LaTeX tools, scripts, and useful imports in a single repository: latex-tools @ GitHub.com. I designed it to have a single entry point includes.tex, and for each paper, I could add this repository as a submodule.

But how should I include such a file in a LaTeX document? One option is to use include, but it mustn’t be used in preambles which disqualifies it from handling package imports. Instead, we can use input that works similarly to the C/C++ #include, doing a simple copy&paste. It does not simplify the build and development, as include does by splitting .tex files into different compilation units, which is great for books and theses with many chapters. However, you can use input with almost all parts of the document and you are allowed to use nested inputs.

There’s one caveat, though: input does not support relative imports. So, for example, if we have the following directory structure, we won’t be able to use \usepackage{dependency} in includes.tex:

+-- paper.tex
+-- latex-tools
|   +-- dependency.sty
|   +-- includes.tex

The paths in input are always relative to the main file. Thus, we end up with an error:

! LaTeX Error: File `dependency.sty' not found.

Fortunately, there’s an import package to the rescue! The last / in directory name is important, otherwise the path is not correctly processed.

\usepackage{import}
\subimport{latex-tools/}{includes.tex}

Thus, we can easily decompose LaTeX sources, tables, and graphics into a hierarchy of modules.