Avoiding the creation of .aux, .log and .synctex.gz files when using pdflatex [closed]

Question

latexmk -c will remove the unnecessary files. latexmk is a great way to manage the compile too!

I always build my PDF files like this:

pdflatex -aux-directory=/some/temp/dir <additional options>

That way, I don't have too see all the additional files. Those files should not be removed, as they are important for cross referencing, bibliographies, table of contents etc. To run pdflatex several times and then remove the files takes too much time.

The -aux-directory unfortunately does not exist in the linux version of pdflatex. Tested on Ubuntu Lucid.

For people on Linux the equivalent to -aux-directory appears to be -output-directory, unfortunately it doesn't play nicely with \include{...} (included files' .aux files still get dumped in the current directory).

See also: the man page.

If anyone using TeXnicCenter has the same desire to only get a *.pdf file for the given *.tex file (no *.aux, *.bbl, *.blg and *.log files), here is a quick solution: Choose from the menu: Build | Define Output Profiles, copy the "LaTeX => PDF" profile to a new profile "LaTeX => PDF ONLY", then on the Postprocessor tab create four new postprocessors:

Name: delete *.XXX

Executable: "C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe"

Arguments: /C del "%bm.XXX"

Replace XXX with aux, bbl, blg, log, respectively.

For MikTeX:

texify -cp  file.tex

It will run pdflatex as many times as necessairy and clean temp files afterwards. Very useful.

A well crafted wrapper script seems to be the best answer. Something along these lines, which I've tested on Ubuntu using texlive-latex (pdftex 1.40.10) :

#!/bin/bash
TMPDIR=$(mktemp -d)
trap "rm -fr $TMPDIR; exit 255;" SIGINT SIGTERM SIGKILL

/usr/bin/latex -interaction=batchmode -output-directory=$TMPDIR $1
cp $TMPDIR/$1.dvi .
rm -fr $TMPDIR

IIRC \nofiles in your file suppresses the .aux output.