How do I check from within python whether LaTeX and TeX Live are installed on a computer?
Question:
I am writing a python program which generates TeX code that gets compiled into a PDF document. For this to work, I need to make sure that the user has some distribution of LaTeX installed on their computer. How do I do this from within Python 2.7 in a platform-independent way?
Answers:
Update for Python 3.11 and 3.12+:
According to PEP 632, distutils has been deprecated, use shutil.which:
if shutil.which('latex'): print('latex installed')
Before Python 3.10:
from distutils.spawn import find_executable
if find_executable('latex'): print('latex installed')
This should do what you want.
I am writing a python program which generates TeX code that gets compiled into a PDF document. For this to work, I need to make sure that the user has some distribution of LaTeX installed on their computer. How do I do this from within Python 2.7 in a platform-independent way?
Update for Python 3.11 and 3.12+:
According to PEP 632, distutils has been deprecated, use shutil.which:
if shutil.which('latex'): print('latex installed')
Before Python 3.10:
from distutils.spawn import find_executable
if find_executable('latex'): print('latex installed')
This should do what you want.