Demonstration of the subfiles package

Author

LianTze Lim

Last Updated

7 years ago

License

Creative Commons CC BY 4.0

Abstract

The subfiles package and class can help with typesetting multi-file projects, where subsidiary files will inherit the main file's preamble when they themselves are compiled (i.e. "set as main" in Overleaf projects.

Note, though, that at present .tex files inside a folder cannot be set as a project's main file.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

\usepackage{fullpage}
\usepackage{newtxtext,newtxmath}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{listings}
\lstset{language={[LaTeX]TeX},basicstyle=\ttfamily}

\usepackage{subfiles}

\title{Demonstration of the subfiles package}

\begin{document}

This is the main file, with the preamble

\begin{lstlisting}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

\usepackage{fullpage}
\usepackage{newtxtext,newtxmath}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{listings}

\usepackage{subfiles}
\end{lstlisting}

If you set \texttt{intro.tex} as the main file instead, then only the contents of that file is typeset. It automatically inherits the preamble of this \texttt{main.tex}, via \verb|\documentclass[main]{subfiles}|.

\subfile{intro}

\end{document}