Install tinytex into Rstudio Docker

Question

I am trying to dockerize an Rstudio container, where a quarto document will be rendered to pdf. Everything else in the container runs fine, however, when I try to render the quarto document, I get this error:

running xelatex - 1

No TeX installation was detected.

Please run 'quarto install tinytex' to install TinyTex.
If you prefer, you may install TexLive or another TeX distribution.

This is my Dockerfile:

FROM rocker/tidyverse:4.3.2

RUN apt-get update -qq && apt-get -y --no-install-recommends install \
    && install2.r --error --skipmissing --deps TRUE --skipinstalled \
    tidyverse \
    car \
    corrplot \
    cowplot \
    tidymodels \
    knitr \
    kableExtra \
    testthat \
    docopt

RUN Rscript -e 'tinytex::install_tinytex()'

I have tried adding the following lines to the Dockerfile on separate occasions but none of them worked.

RUN install2.r --error --skipmissing --deps TRUE --skipinstalled tinytex

RUN quarto install tinytex

RUN apt-get wget 
RUN wget -qO- "https://yihui.org/tinytex/install-bin-unix.sh" | sh

Answer 1

Dockerfile

FROM rocker/tidyverse:4.3.2

RUN apt-get update -qq && apt-get -y --no-install-recommends install \
    && install2.r --error --skipmissing --deps TRUE --skipinstalled \
        tidyverse \
        car \
        corrplot \
        cowplot \
        tidymodels \
        knitr \
        kableExtra \
        testthat \
        docopt

RUN Rscript -e 'tinytex::install_tinytex()'

ENV PATH="${PATH}:/root/bin"

RUN tlmgr update --self
RUN tlmgr update --all
RUN tlmgr install \
        koma-script \
        caption \
        pgf \
        environ \
        tikzfill \
        tcolorbox \
        pdfcol

# TEST ========================================================================

COPY minimal.qmd .

CMD quarto render minimal.qmd

minimal.qmd

---
title: "Minimal Quarto Document"
format: pdf
---

# Introduction

This is a test document.

Okay, so that works. But what if you want to mount a volume with the markdown file and render it from RStudio?

Update Dockerfile.

FROM rocker/tidyverse:4.3.2

RUN apt-get update -qq && apt-get -y --no-install-recommends install \
    && install2.r --error --skipmissing --deps TRUE --skipinstalled \
        tidyverse \
        car \
        corrplot \
        cowplot \
        tidymodels \
        knitr \
        kableExtra \
        testthat \
        docopt

USER rstudio

RUN Rscript -e 'tinytex::install_tinytex()'

ENV PATH="${PATH}:/home/rstudio/bin"

RUN tlmgr update --self
RUN tlmgr update --all
RUN tlmgr install \
        koma-script \
        caption \
        pgf \
        environ \
        tikzfill \
        tcolorbox \
        pdfcol

USER root

The LaTeX distribution is being installed as the rstudio user.

Build and launch.

docker build -t rstudio-tinytex .
docker run -it --rm \
  -e PASSWORD=password \
  -p 8787:8787 \
  -v $(pwd):/home/rstudio/workspace \
  rstudio-tinytex

Navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8787/ and login with user rstudio and password password (you can set something more secure via the PASSWORD environment variable). Then within RStudio go to the workspace/ directory, open the file and render.