ShareLaTeX

ShareLaTeX is a web-based collaborative LaTeX editor. We run a hosted service at https://www.sharelatex.com and this repository contains the open source code that powers it and allows you to run a local installation.

ShareLaTeX uses a service orientied architecture (SOA) where we have lots of small APIs that talk to each other over HTTP and Redis pub-sub channels. This repository pulls together all of the different services and allows you to set up and run them quickly.

Installation

First, check out a local copy of this repository:

$ git clone git@github.com:sharelatex/sharelatex.git
$ cd sharelatex

Next install all the node modules and ShareLaTeX services:

$ npm install
$ grunt install

When that has finished, run ShareLaTeX with

$ grunt run

ShareLaTeX should now be running at http://localhost:3000.

Dependencies

You need:

Node.js 0.10 or greater
The grunt command line tools (Run npm install -g grunt-cli to install them)
A local instance of Redis and Mongodb running on their standard ports.

Config

ShareLaTeX should mostly run out of the box, although it uses Amazon S3 for storing binary files like images. You will need to configure ShareLaTeX to use your own S3 access key which can be done by editing the file at config/settings.development.coffee

Other repositories

ShareLaTeX consists of many separate services, each with their own Node.js process and source code repository. These are all downloaded and set upwhen you run grunt install

The different services are:

web

The front facing web server that serves all the HTML pages, CSS and javascript to the client. Also contains a lot of logic around creating and editing projects, and account management.

document-updater

Processes updates that come in from the editor when users modify documents. Ensures that the updates are applied in the right order, and that only one operation is modifying the document at a time. Also caches the documents in redis for very fast but persistent modifications.

CLSI

The Common LaTeX Service Interface (CLSI) which provides an API for compiling LaTeX documents.

filestore

An API for perform CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) operations on binary files (like images) stored in ShareLaTeX.

Contributing

Please see the CONTRIBUTING file for information on contributing to the development of ShareLaTeX.

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