Script wrappers in TeX Live on Windows Rationale Wrappers enable use of scripts on Windows as regular programs. They are also required for some binary programs to set up the right environment for them. Batch scripts can be used for wrapping but they are not as universal as binaries (there are some odd cases where they don't work) and it is hard to make them robust and secure. Compiled binary wrappers don't suffer from these problems but they are harder to write, debug and maintain in comparison to scripts. For these reasons a hybrid approach is taken that combines a binary stub with a launcher script. Adding wrappers for user scripts The script wrapping machinery is not limited to scripts shipped with TeX Live. You can also use it for script programs from manually installed packages. This should minimize problems when using them with TeX Live. First, make sure that there is an interpreter program available on your system for the script you want to use. Interpreters for Perl and Lua are bundled with TeX Live, all others have to be installed independently. Lua scripts are the most efficient to run, so if you consider writing a new script, that would be the recommended choice. The following script types and their file extensions are currently supported and searched in that order: Lua (.tlu;.texlua;.lua) -- included Perl (.pl) -- included Ruby (.rb) -- requires installation Python (.py) -- requires installation Tcl (.tcl) -- requires installation Java (.jar) -- requires installation VBScript (.vbs) -- part of Windows JScript (.js) -- part of Windows Batch (.bat;.cmd) -- part of Windows Finally, Unix-style extensionless scripts are searched as last and the interpreter program is established based on the she-bang (#!) specification on the very first line of the script. This can be an arbitrary program but it must be present on the search path. Next, the script program needs to be installed somewhere below the 'scripts' directory under one of the TEXMF trees (consult the documentation or texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf file for a list). You may need to update the file search database afterwards with: mktexlsr [TEXMFDIR] It is also possible to use scripts that are outside of TEXMF hierarchy by adjusting TEXMFSCRIPTS environment or kpathsea variable, see kpathsea documentation for more information on setting its variables. Test if the script can be located with: kpsewhich --format=texmfscripts . This should output the full path to the script if everything is properly installed and configured. If this test is successful, the script can be run immediately with: runscript [script arguments] If you prefer to call the script program simply by its name, copy and rename bin/win32/runscript.exe to .exe and put it somewhere on the search path. Wrapper structure Wrappers consist of small binary stubs and a common texlua script. The binary stubs are all the same, just different names (but CLI and GUI stubs differ, see below, and GUI stubs are actually all different due to different embedded icons). The job of the binary stub is twofold: (a) call the texlua launcher script 'runscript.tlu' from the same directory (or more precisely from the directory containing 'runscript.dll') and (b) pass to it argv[0] and the unparsed argument string as the last two arguments (after adding a sentinel argument, which ends with a new line character). Arbitrary C strings can be passed, because the script is executed by linking with luatex.dll and calling the lua interpreter internally rather than by spawning a new process. There are two flavours of the binary stub: one for CLI programs and another one for GUI programs. The GUI variant does not open a console window nor does it block the command prompt if started from there. It also uses a dialog box to display an error message in addition to outputting to stderr. The stubs are further split into a common DLL and EXE proxies to it. This is for maintenance reasons - updates can be done by replacement of a single DLL rather than all binary stubs. The launcher script knows, which variant has been used to invoke it based on the sentinel argument. The lack of this argument means that it was invoked in a standard way, i.e., through texlua.exe. All the hard work of locating a script/program to execute happens in the launcher script. The located script/program is always executed directly by spawning its interpreter (or binary) in a new process. The system shell (cmd.exe) is never called (except for batch scripts, of course). If the located script happens to be a (tex)lua script, it is loaded and called internally from within this script, i.e. no new process is spawned. Execution is done using a protected call, so any compile or runtime errors are catched. Source files runscript.tlu launcher script for locating and dispatching target scripts/programs runscript_dll.c common DLL part of the binary stubs; locates and calls the launcher script runscript_exe.c EXE proxy to the common DLL for CLI mode stubs wrunscript_exe.c EXE proxy to the common DLL for GUI mode stubs Compilation of binaries (requires luatex.dll in the same directory) with gcc (size optimized): gcc -Os -s -shared -o runscript.dll runscript_dll.c -L./ -lluatex gcc -Os -s -o runscript.exe runscript_exe.c -L./ -lrunscript gcc -mwindows -Os -s -o wrunscript.exe wrunscript_exe.c -L./ -lrunscript with tcc (extra small size): tiny_impdef luatex.dll tcc -shared -o runscript.dll runscript_dll.c luatex.def tcc -o runscript.exe runscript_exe.c runscript.def tcc -o wrunscript.exe wrunscript_exe.c runscript.def License Originally written in 2009 by Tomasz M. Trzeciak, Public Domain. Prior work: 'tl-w32-wrapper.texlua' by Reinhard Kotucha and Norbert Preining. 'tl-w32-wrapper.cmd' by Tomasz M. Trzeciak. Changelog 2009/12/04 - initial version 2009/12/15 - minor fixes for path & extension list parsing 2010/01/09 - added support for GUI mode stubs 2010/02/28 - enable GUI mode stubs for dviout, psv and texworks; - added generic handling of sys programs - added restricted repstopdf to alias_table 2010/03/13 - added 'readme.txt' and changelog - added support and docs for calling user added scripts; (use path of 'runscript.dll' instead of .exe stub to locate 'runscript.tlu' script) - limit search for shell_escape_commands to system trees - added function for creating directory hierarchy - fixed directory creation for dviout & texworks aliases - fixed arg[0] of repstopdf & rpdfcrop 2010/03/28 - restructured docs, added --help and --version options (available only when invoked under 'runscript' name) - use TEXMF_RESTRICTED_SCRIPTS kpse var for searching shell_escape_commands - changed command validation to handle a list of commands - prepend GUI mode command(s) to the command list - added support for .tcl scripts 2010/03/31 - fixed fatal bug in extention_map definition for GUI mode 2010/04/15 - encapsulated main chunk in a function to execute with pcall for more robustness and better error catching - added texdoctk to scripts4tlperl table - added tlgs and tlperl to alias_table; callable as e.g.: runscript tlperl ... - doc tweaks 2010/04/22 - ensure only backslash is used in USERPROFILE variable (Adobe Reader crash case) - fixed argument processing for direct execution under texlua - more doc tweaks 2010/05/30 - Windows XP or newer required to run TeXworks 2010/06/04 - added support for Perl scripts starting with eval-exec-perl construct in place of she-bang (#!) 2010/06/25 - run internal tlperl only with our Perl - added fontinst to alias_table - added support for all tex4ht commands from mk4ht.pl - removed some unsued aliases - some code refactoring and cleanup 2010/12/28 - use of external Perl now requires kpathsea variable TEXLIVE_WINDOWS_TRY_EXTERNAL_PERL to be explicitly set to 1 - alias_table replaced with if-elseif-end tests to streamline special cases and to avoid hardcoding of texmf* file paths - added a2ping to special cases (requires -x switch to Perl) - set ASYMPTOTE_GS (for asy) to full path to tlgs 2011/01/09 - removed tex4ht commands starting with ht from mk4ht aliases; they have their own scripts and mk4ht calls them internally, so aliasing results in an infinite recursion - removed alias for fontinst (no fontinst.exe any more) - fixed GUI-mode interpreter for Ruby 2011/09/10 - added -dDisableFAPI=true to psview argument list. Needed by gs-9.xx 2012/03/12 - added '-i', '.' to psview argument list (author's request) - added environment clean up from Perl specific variables (when not using external Perl) 2012/08/05 - added alias for fmtutil