📄 Underleaf: LaTeX Report Authoring in VS Code with Docker

This repository—Underleaf—contains the setup and scripts used to author, render, and manage LaTeX documents inside a Dockerized environment using VS Code. It is ideal for students, researchers, or professionals who want to:

• Use LaTeX without installing TeX Live directly on their machine
• Easily build reproducible LaTeX environments
• Version control LaTeX projects with Git
• Maintain lightweight and portable LaTeX builds

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🏗️ Project Structure

├── Dockerfile                # Docker image definition with full TeX Live
├── build.sh                  # Build script to compile LaTeX project
├── clean.sh                  # Script to remove build artifacts
├── references.bib            # BibLaTeX-compatible bibliography file
├── report.tex                # Your main LaTeX source file
├── images/                   # Folder containing embedded images
│   ├── landing.png
│   ├── welcome.png
│   └── ist.png
├── .gitignore                # Optional: git ignore rules for LaTeX artifacts
└── README.md                 # This file

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🚀 Getting Started

1. Build the Docker Image

docker build -t underleaf .

2. Run the Container (One-Time or Repeated Use)

docker run --rm -it -v $(pwd):/workspace underleaf

This mounts your project into the container and starts an interactive shell.

3. Compile the LaTeX Project

Inside the container:

./build.sh

4. Clean Project (optional)

./clean.sh

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🛠️ Setup Notes

• The build.sh script uses latexmk with biber as the backend for biblatex

• The Docker image installs:

  • texlive-full
  • biber
  • Essential LaTeX packages (e.g. biblatex, csquotes, microtype, hyperref, etc.)

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📚 Bibliography

• Make sure your .bib file is properly formatted (e.g., APA or IEEE via biblatex)
• We recommend using style=ieee in biblatex for numbered references

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🧼 Clean Builds

Use the provided clean.sh to remove auxiliary files and keep your repo clean:

./clean.sh

This removes:

• .aux, .log, .toc, .out, .bbl, .blg, etc.

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🧠 Tips

• You can use VS Code’s LaTeX Workshop extension for editing and syntax highlighting
• For very large images or PDFs, compress them before including
• Always run build.sh inside the Docker container for consistency

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📦 Future Enhancements

• Add Makefile for platform-independent building
• Enable PDF optimization post-processing
• Add support for multiple output formats (PDF, HTML)

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🤝 Contributing

Feel free to fork and contribute improvements for handling bibliography styles, Docker optimizations, or tooling integrations.

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🪪 License

MIT License

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Underleaf: Reproducible, portable, and professional LaTeX workflows in VS Code with Docker.