● 🇧🇷 Leia em Português

Configuring VSCode to work with Minted (LaTeX)

I was handling some LaTeX files and I needed code coloring. I found the package minted and it seemed perfect, but it required a couple of things that made my life a bit more complicated on VSCode.

Installing the package

I installed the package as normally you would in LaTeX:

\usepackage{minted}                        % code color

The problem is that minted require Python 2.7 and a package call Pygments. So I created a virtualenv using Python 2.7 and added the packaged using pip

pip install Pygments

VSCode went crazy now…

The problem is that this broke my VSCode setup, because minted required me to add --shell-escape to the pdflatex, and the default way of running LaTeX of VSCode didn’t include that. Because of that, my document that was all nice and compiling when I ran on the terminal, was resulting in this:

A screenshot of the VSCode interface showing several problems listed where the first is: Package minted you must invoke Latex with the shell-escape flag

And VSCode went crazy and showed a lot of errors when automatically compiling:

A screenshot of the VSCode interface showing an error with the message Package minted you must have pygmentize installed to use this package

Let’s fix VSCode

So I went to Code > Preferences > Settings > Extensions and rolled until the end to get to a configuration that said Edit in settings.json and added the following configuration:

"latex-workshop.latex.tools": [
        {
            "name": "latexmk",
            "command": "latexmk",
            "args": [
                "--shell-escape",
                "-synctex=1",
                "-interaction=nonstopmode",
                "-file-line-error",
                "-pdf",
                "-outdir=%OUTDIR%",
                "%DOC%"
            ]
        },
        {
            "name": "pdflatex",
            "command": "pdflatex",
            "args": [
                "--shell-escape",
                "-synctex=1",
                "-interaction=nonstopmode",
                "-file-line-error",
                "%DOC%"
            ]
        },
        {
            "name": "bibtex",
            "command": "bibtex",
            "args": [
                "%DOCFILE%"
            ]
        }
    ]

Also wanted VSCode to run within my virtualenv, so on extensions, I added the Python extension.

A screenshot showing VSCode extension marketplace with a filter for Python extensions.

Once installed I used Cmd+Shift+P and used Select Interpreter to select my current virtualenv.

A screenshot showing how to select the Python Interpreter in the VSCode interface

Now I got no errors and the VSCode is happy again:

A screenshot showing how VSCode displays the selected Python interpreter on the lower area of its interface

Using it!

Now I can add any language the package supports and some additional configuration! For instance, in here linenos will add line numbers ;)

\begin{minted}[linenos]{python}
  for i in range(0,2):
      print(i)
\end{minted}

PS 1: Yes, I created a virtualenv called banana but I was lazy to create cute one for this tutorial 🥺

PS 2: I used miniconda to create this venv and VSCode required some extra config for this but they had a pop for this and did it automatically

That’s it for now 😉

– This post includes and expands Wu Sun’s post that was super helpful to me

– Image cover by Miguel Á. Padriñan in Pexels

❤
Cheers!
Letícia

Comments