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Exporting to Beamer from org-mode creates a myriad of temporary files (the .tex file + files ending in .aux, .log, .toc, .fls, .nav, .vrb, etc.).

Most LaTeX implementations now have an option (-outdir) to keep all these temporary files outside from the current directory.

How can the export to Beamer be modified to use this facility?

Many thanks!

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  • I didn't try it, but this is how'd I go about it: try setting org-latex-pdf-process to something like "latexmk -pdflatex='pdflatex -shell-escape -interaction nonstopmode' -pdf -bibtex -outdir <some-directory> -f %f".
    – wvxvw
    Commented Dec 2, 2014 at 6:16
  • Thank you for your reply, @wvxvw. This is a good starting point, but it has two problems: (1) the .tex is still generated in the local directory and (2) the PDF viewer does not open the generated PDF (as it does not know where it was created).
    – scaramouche
    Commented Dec 2, 2014 at 14:21
  • Sorry, it's taking so long... I tried to follow Org export procedure and I think that you want to look into C-h f org-export-output-file-name, it talks about setting name for the file being exported (this would be the TeX file), this function also happens to return this name to whoever called it, which, I guess, would be the function which will try to open the PDF. Sorry, I didn't have the time to actually try it.
    – wvxvw
    Commented Dec 3, 2014 at 17:22
  • To automatically remove the temporary files after export, see emacs.stackexchange.com/a/24000/8541
    – Mark
    Commented Jan 3, 2017 at 16:30

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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I came up with this recently to solve the problem of export cluttering the current directory, although it is not the solution asked for, I think it belongs here, plus it fixes it for any files org-export generates.

(defvar org-export-output-directory-prefix "export_" "prefix of directory used for org-mode export")

(defadvice org-export-output-file-name (before org-add-export-dir activate)
  "Modifies org-export to place exported files in a different directory"
  (when (not pub-dir)
      (setq pub-dir (concat org-export-output-directory-prefix (substring extension 1)))
      (when (not (file-directory-p pub-dir))
       (make-directory pub-dir))))

change org-export-output-directory-prefix to something of your liking. Let me know if it works with beamer.

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  • This works well, but only if pdflatex is not called with an -output-directory argument in the org-latex-pdf-process list.
    – Mark
    Commented Jan 3, 2017 at 16:22
  • @Mark, that seems like it would override it and use output-directory, does it?
    – user2699
    Commented Jan 7, 2017 at 2:39
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    in org-mode version 9.0-elpa, the default org-latex-pdf-process variable executes the following 3 times: %latex -interaction nonstopmode -output-directory %o %f. Unless the -output-directory %o is removed, an error is produced when exporting to LaTeX, where LaTeX complains that it can't write on file filename.log.
    – Mark
    Commented Jan 10, 2017 at 4:03
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    Also, when using biber in org-latex-pdf-process, I needed to modify the command to be biber --output-directory .. %b so that any .bib files are visible to biber. An alternative to this is (cd .. ; biber %o/%b) which may also work for bibtex, and assumes that emacs is using a POSIX shell to execute commands.
    – Mark
    Commented Jan 25, 2017 at 14:36

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