One of the big advantages that Tectonic offers compared to the traditional TeX stack is that all of Tectonic’s functionality is delivered in a single executable file — not the usual tree of thousands of interlocking data files and binary tools.
You appear to be running Unix. The quickest way to get Tectonic is to run the following command in your terminal:
$
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -fsSL https://drop-sh.fullyjustified.net |sh
This will place the tectonic program in the directory where
you ran the command. After that, you’re done!
You appear to be running Windows. The quickest way to get Tectonic is to run the following commands in a PowerShell terminal:
>
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072
iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://drop-ps1.fullyjustified.net'))
This will place the tectonic.exe program in the directory where
you ran the commands. After that, you’re done!
I don't recognize your platform, so I’m not able to recommend a preferred installation method. Please see the more thorough instructions below.
There are many different ways that you can install Tectonic, and the Book provides all of the details. In summary, the major options are:
- On most systems, you can copy and paste a command into your terminal that will download and unpack Tectonic for you
- You can also find the latest released binaries on GitHub, download the appropriate file for your system, and unpack it yourself
- Many package managers provide Tectonic, often in a package simply named
tectonic— the book has a list - If you want or need to, you can compile Tectonic yourself using the Rust package manager Cargo
The copy/paste method should cover most use cases, but if you want better integration with your operating system or computing environment, packaged versions might make more sense. There should be no need to compile Tectonic yourself unless you want to, or you’re hoping to run it on an unusual platform.