Crthuky

The problem is synctex in Arara does not work for me.

I am using MacTeX with TeXShop 4.26. A special documentclass is used (hope it does not affect). For months, I run this file by putting all the supporting files like chp1.tex into the same file folder and clicking command+T. Synchronising from pdf to tex and everything else is fine except synchronising from tex to pdf. Synchronising from tex to pdf works well in editing any other simple file using pdflatex directly (rather than using Arara). Is there anything wrong?

% !TEX TS-program = Arara
% arara: pdflatex
% arara: bibtex
% arara: makeindex
% arara: nomencl
% arara: pdflatex: synctex: yes
% arara: pdflatex: synctex: on
documentclass[cmyk]***
usepackageamsrefs
usepackageimakeidx
usepackagegraphicx,tikz,amscd
usepackage[hyperindex,colorlinks,pageanchor]hyperref
usepackage[capitalize]cleveref
makeindex
usepackage[refpage]nomencl
makenomenclature
begindocument
frontmatter
inputfront
tableofcontents
includepreface
mainmatter
includechp1
includechp2
appendix
includeappd
backmatter
bibliographystyleamsalpha
bibliographybiblio
printindex
printnomenclature
pagestyleempty
enddocument

^{I deliberately marked this answer as community wiki because it is not actually a direct answer, but along the lines of an elaborate comment which is too long to be posted as such. I really don't feel like harvesting reputation. :)}

For starters, thanks for the log. :)

It is clear, from inspecting the log, that arara successfully goes through all the motions of executing the commands mapped from the directives. However, to me, there's no clear indication that the tool is to blame on the issue reported in this question. I will expand on that.

arara is just like a wrapper to ease the call for the actual programs like pdflatex and friends. In fact, if I take the provided code and run through the tool with --dry-run enabled, we can see what arara is actually executing on a normal scenario (in here, without an a call, surely, since this flag disables the actual execution):

$ arara --dry-run 478314.tex 
 __ _ _ __ __ _ _ __ __ _ 
 / _` | '__/ _` | '__/ _` |
| (_| | | | (_| | | | (_| |
 __,_|_| __,_|_| __,_|

Processing '478314.tex' (size: 231 bytes, last modified:
03/10/2019 17:53:47), please wait.

[DR] (PDFLaTeX) PDFLaTeX engine
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Authors: Marco Daniel, Paulo Cereda
About to run: [ pdflatex, 478314.tex ]

[DR] (BibTeX) The BibTeX reference management software
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Authors: Marco Daniel, Paulo Cereda
About to run: [ bibtex, 478314 ]

[DR] (MakeIndex) The MakeIndex software
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Authors: Marco Daniel, Paulo Cereda
About to run: [ makeindex, -t, 478314.ilg, 478314.idx, -o,
478314.ind ]

[DR] (Nomencl) The Nomenclature software
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Authors: Marco Daniel, Nicola Talbot, Paulo Cereda
About to run: [ makeindex, 478314.nlo, -s, nomencl.ist, -o,
478314.nls ]

[DR] (PDFLaTeX) PDFLaTeX engine
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Authors: Marco Daniel, Paulo Cereda
About to run: [ pdflatex, --synctex=1, 478314.tex ]

[DR] (PDFLaTeX) PDFLaTeX engine
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Authors: Marco Daniel, Paulo Cereda
About to run: [ pdflatex, --synctex=1, 478314.tex ]

Total: 0.42 seconds

The last two calls to pdflatex have the --synctex=1 flag, which is expected to provide proper SyncTeX support. That's it.

However, little to nothing can be done without delving into the depths of your actual environment and code in order to see what is happening. My suggestion is to independently run

pdflatex --synctex=1 myfile.tex

in the command line and see what happens. I can think of some scenarios:

1. The editor is not aware that there was a compilation chain that generated the resulting PDF, thus nothing is updated, or




2. You have directives in your source code (not shown in this particular example) that get rid of synctex.gz files as a means to declutter the directory, or




3. There are potential conflicts in the source code that are causing this issue.

Speaking of which, I noticed that the log file contains a lot of warning about cross references. Although SyncTeX is not directly related to it, maybe it's something worth checking. From my side, I tried a couple of documents of mine and they worked, so I really cannot reproduce this issue, I am so sorry.

Please try to run pdflatex as a standalone call instead of using arara and see if it works. Also, try other similar tools like latexmk. If the problem persists, we might need to get down to a minimal working example that reproduces the issue, otherwise I can only suppose.

Sorry for not being able to help you on this issue. Please keep me informed.

I found a solution: Add % !TEX root = main.tex at the beginning of the file for each chapter, such as that of the file chp1.tex. This command assigns a relative path so that the generated sync file finds the main file which contains a line of includechp1. An alternative solution is to add an absolute path like
% !TEX root = /Users/main.tex if /Users/main.tex is the location of the file main.tex on my Mac. The problem should be about editing a book in multi-files, rather than using Arara.