Bug in running external program (-shell-escape)

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

Am Samstag, dem 04.03.2023 um 15:21 +0100 schrieb Mario D:
> Nevertheless, it looks like a bit weird, as workaround: it results in
> a symlink pointing to himself which gives a sort of infinite
> recursion into itself! 

Granted. It's a workaround.

> What I don't like of this hack, apart from this "recursion", is that
> it creates a symlink in the tmp dir of the file which prevent the lyx
> root temp dir in /tmp to be removed when lyx is closed.

That's annoying, I agree. However, with the following addition, the
subdir is removed after the file is being processed, which then also
makes LyX remove the tmp dir:

\usepackage{atveryend}
\AtVeryEndDocument{%
  \ShellEscape{rm -f picts}
}

> Moreover, it doesn't save pictures permanently, as it should be in
> the intended use of external, so that every time you open again the
> file pictures have to be recompiled from source the first time you
> compile.

I don't think so. As far as I can see, LyX (LaTeX) sees the pictures in
the working directory (in picts/) and reads them. New versions should
only be created if they differ from the old ones. And in that case,
through the symlink, the updated versions are permanently stored. Or do
you have evidence that the files are always re-created from scratch?

Best,

-- 
Jürgen