The Tectonic Typesetting System — The Tectonic Typesetting System
Tectonic is a modernized, complete, self-contained<br>TeX/LaTeX<br>engine, powered by XeTeX<br>and TeXLive.
Install Tectonic 0.16.9
April 17, 2026 •<br>Changelog
For those new to it, TeX is<br>a programming language that you use to create typeset documents<br>rather than computer software. TeX is quite archaic in some ways, but it’s<br>still the tool of choice for documents that require precision typography or<br>ones that involve lots of mathematical equations, which makes it especially<br>important in the sciences. Tectonic converts TeX files<br>into PDF<br>files.
What’s in it for me?
Tectonic automatically downloads support files so you don’t have<br>to install a full LaTeX system in order to start using it. If you start<br>using a new LaTeX package, Tectonic just pulls down the files it needs and<br>continues processing. The underyling “bundle” technology allows<br>for completely reproducible document compiles . Thanks<br>to the Dataverse Project for hosting<br>the large LaTeX resource files!
Tectonic has sophisticated logic and automatically loops TeX and<br>BibTeX as needed, and only as much as needed. In its default mode<br>it doesn’t write TeX’s intermediate files and always produces<br>a fully-processed document .<br>The tectonic command-line program is quiet and never<br>stops to ask for input .
Thanks to the power of XeTeX, Tectonic can use modern OpenType<br>fonts and is fully Unicode-enabled .
The Tectonic engine has been extracted into a completely<br>self-contained library so that it can be embedded in other<br>applications.
Tectonic has been forked from the old-fashioned WEB2C implementation<br>of TeX and is developed in the open<br>on GitHub<br>using modern tools like the Rust<br>language.
Tectonic can be used from Github Actions to typeset your documents whenever a change to them is made:
setup-tectonic - Use tectonic in your<br>github action workflows (supports caching and optionally biber)
compile-latex - Thanks to Vinay Sharma for creating the action.
user@host $ tectonic paper.tex<br>Running TeX ...<br>note: warnings were issued by the TeX engine; use --print and/or --keep-logs for details.<br>Running BibTeX ...<br>Rerunning TeX because bibtex was run ...<br>Rerunning TeX because "paper.aux" changed ...<br>Rerunning TeX because "paper.aux" changed ...<br>Running xdvipdfmx ...<br>Writing paper.pdf (383521 bytes)<br>Skipped writing 3 intermediate files (use --keep-intermediates to keep them)<br>user@host $
About the name
The name of the project is “Tectonic,” spelled and pronounced like a<br>regular word because it is one. Enough with the cutesy obscurantism. In<br>cases where the name might lead to ambiguities, it should be expanded to<br>“Tectonic typesetting.”
If you’re feeling expansive, you can interpret the name as suggesting a<br>large change in the TeX world. Or you can think of it as suggesting a<br>salubrious offering for weary TeX users. Either way, the root of the word<br>does go back to the ancient Greek τέκτων, ”carpenter,” which Donald Knuth —<br>the creator of TeX and a devout Christian — might appreciate.
Acknowledgments
Tectonic would not have been possible without decades’ worth of hard<br>work by the people behind LaTeX,<br>TeXLive,<br>XeTeX,<br>and (x)dvipdfm-x. We stand<br>on the shoulders of giants!
The Dataverse Project kindly hosts the<br>large bundles of LaTeX resource files that enable Tectonic’s web-download<br>capabilities.
Copyright and licensing
Tectonic is licensed under the MIT License. This is the license under which<br>the codebase from which it is primarily derived, XeTeX, is distributed.<br>Various other elements of the TeX system on which Tectonic is based are<br>licensed under other open-source licenses.