Tectonic compilation failure

Trying to compile a file I get

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

The same file is correctly handled by pdflatex.

The complete output of the compilation command with the -p flag is the following:

tectonic RelazioneTirocinio.tex -p
note: this is a BETA release; ask questions and report bugs at https://tectonic.newton.cx/
Running TeX ...
(RelazioneTirocinio.tex
LaTeX2e <2016/03/31>
Babel <3.9r> and hyphenation patterns for 83 language(s) loaded.
(report.cls
Document Class: report 2014/09/29 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class
(size11.clo)) (inputenc.sty

Package inputenc Warning: inputenc package ignored with utf8 based engines.

) (babel.sty (italian.ldf (babel.def (xebabel.def)))) (etoolbox.sty)
(csquotes.sty (keyval.sty) (csquotes.def) (csquotes.cfg)) (amsmath.sty
For additional information on amsmath, use the `?' option.
(amstext.sty (amsgen.sty)) (amsbsy.sty) (amsopn.sty)) (amsfonts.sty)
(amssymb.sty) (graphicx.sty (graphics.sty (trig.sty) (graphics.cfg) (xetex.def
(infwarerr.sty) (ltxcmds.sty)))) (booktabs.sty) (caption.sty (caption3.sty))
(subfig.sty) (color.sty (color.cfg)) (listings.sty (lstmisc.sty) (listings.cfg)
) (lstlang1.sty) (layaureo.sty (geometry.sty (ifpdf.sty) (ifvtex.sty)
(ifxetex.sty)) (calc.sty)) (varioref.sty)

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

Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed,
or enter new name. (Default extension: sty)

Enter file name: error: terminal input forbidden

If you need any additional information or you want the text as issue on the github page, please let me know.

Indeed, the standard Tectonic bundle doesn’t include the pstricks.sty file, which is provided by the pstricks package, so this set of macros isn’t available.

The standard workarounds are:

  1. Avoid the macro package, if possible
  2. Download the package manually (from CTAN) and place the needed files next to your document. (Recognizing that this is far from ideal for nontrivial packages!)

In this particular case things might get hairy. The name pstricks refers to the PostScript format, whereas Tectonic outputs PDF files directly. However, based on the relevant documentation, I think that it should be possible to use pstricks with Tectonic — there are some words about compatibility with XeTeX, from which Tectonic is derived, and there’s a xetex-pstricks package. On the other hand, this functionality seems to rely on installing an xdvipdfmx.cfg config file that Tectonic will probably ignore.

Please let me know if you’re able to confirm whether pstricks can be made to work with Tectonic! If so I will add it to the next revision of the default bundle.

1 Like

Putting that files in the directory I get a different error:

tectonic RelazioneTirocinio.tex 
note: this is a BETA release; ask questions and report bugs at https://tectonic.newton.cx/
Running TeX ...
error: something bad happened inside TeX; its output follows:

===============================================================================
(RelazioneTirocinio.tex
LaTeX2e <2016/03/31>
Babel <3.9r> and hyphenation patterns for 83 language(s) loaded.
(report.cls
Document Class: report 2014/09/29 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class
(size11.clo)) (inputenc.sty

Package inputenc Warning: inputenc package ignored with utf8 based engines.

) (babel.sty (italian.ldf (babel.def (xebabel.def)))) (etoolbox.sty)
(csquotes.sty (keyval.sty) (csquotes.def) (csquotes.cfg)) (amsmath.sty
For additional information on amsmath, use the `?' option.
(amstext.sty (amsgen.sty)) (amsbsy.sty) (amsopn.sty)) (amsfonts.sty)
(amssymb.sty) (graphicx.sty (graphics.sty (trig.sty) (graphics.cfg) (xetex.def
(infwarerr.sty) (ltxcmds.sty)))) (booktabs.sty) (caption.sty (caption3.sty))
(subfig.sty) (color.sty (color.cfg)) (listings.sty (lstmisc.sty) (listings.cfg)
) (lstlang1.sty) (layaureo.sty (geometry.sty (ifpdf.sty) (ifvtex.sty)
(ifxetex.sty)) (calc.sty)) (varioref.sty) (pstricks.sty (iftex.sty)
(shellesc.sty

Package shellesc Warning: Shell escape disabled on input line 63.

) (xcolor.sty (color.cfg)) (pst-xkey (xkeyval.sty (xkeyval (xkvutils))))
(pstricks (pst-xkey) (pstricks (pst-xkey) (pstricks (pst-xkey) (pstricks
(pst-xkey) (pstricks (pst-xkey) (pstricks (pst-xkey) (pstricks (pst-xkey)
(pstricks (pst-xkey) (pstricks (pst-xkey) (pstricks (pst-xkey) (pstricks
(pst-xkey) (pstricks (pst-xkey) (pstricks
! TeX capacity exceeded, sorry [text input levels=15].
\@filef@und ->pst-xkey 
                       
l.107 }{}
         
No pages of output.
Transcript written on RelazioneTirocinio.log.
===============================================================================

error: halted on potentially-recoverable error as specified

Hmm. It looks like the pstricks and pst-xkey packages are recursively including each other … that’s a sign of a significant enough problem that someone is probably going to have to put some effort into understanding what’s going on in order to fix things. So I’ve filed a GitHub issue.

Apologies for the problems! Your best bet for compiling this particular document with Tectonic is probably to find a way to avoid using pstricks — which I recognize might be a lot to ask.

1 Like

No problem, it was just a test to see if Tectonic was able to compile a document of average complexity. I already compiled the project with pdflatex. I’m glad if I could help to improve this software program.