LyX: Installing unknown document classes

This post is archived. It is left as is and won't receive updates.

If you either received a LyX file that uses a document class unknown to your LyX installation or you would like to create a document using one of the options in the settings dialog, you need to install that document class.

This description is for Mac OS based on the latest version of MacTeX (as of May 28th 2012 this is MacTeX-2011), but should work with any version.

First, you should find out where the document class package should be put. In a previous version, I mentioned to put it in /usr/local/texlive/<version>/texmf-dist/tex/latex/ but this approach is not recommended, because it makes it only available for the current version. There are two better options that allow you to install a new version and keep all your custom packages: You can either make it available to all users or just your user.

• All users: /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local/tex/latex/
• Just you: Run kpsewhich -var-value=TEXMFHOME in Terminal. This will show you your personal TEXMF home directory (e.g., ~/Library/texmf). In case it doesn't exist, you need to create it, as well as the sub-directories, to get the path ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex/.

Now that you know where to put it, follow these steps:

1. Download the desired document class package.
2. Put the folder with the downloaded document class package into the path retrieved above. You can use Finder to do that. In Finder go to Go > Go to Folder and type in the path. You need to authenticate yourself in order to do that.
3. In Terminal execute the following command: sudo texhash You will be required to enter your password. In case texhash cannot be found you have to go to /usr/local/texlive/<version>/texmf-dist/bin/ and execute sudo ./texhash. You can make sure it worked by executing kpsewhich classname.cls which will give you the path to that package class.
4. In LyX do Reconfigure (in the menu bar LyX > Reconfigure)
5. Restart LyX and the document class should be available now

On Windows (using MikTeX) this should work quite easy using the MikTeX Package Manager.

Updates to this blog post

• 28.03.2013: Fixed path to LaTeX packages (Thanks, Mathias!)
• 05.04.2013: Updated description with better location for custom document classes.

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