LATEX-DEV(1)

💖 LATEX-DEV 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the group chat for latex-dev(1) — a General Commands Manual situation, and honestly? it's giving "be the test subject you wish to see in the world" 💅

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✨ NAME ✨

latex-dev, pdflatex-dev, xelatex-dev, lualatex-dev, dvilualatex-dev, platex-dev, uplatex-dev — release candidate LaTeX testing 🧪🦋

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

latex-dev [options] [&format]  [ file [ more-input ] | [ \more-input ]

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👑 DESCRIPTION 👑

okay so here's the whole vibe: these -dev executables exist so that anyone who's interested can easily help test upcoming LaTeX releases 🫶 They correspond to new formats which have been tested by the LaTeX team for stability and usability. And like — important distinction, bestie — they are not arbitrary development snapshots. no no. they are more like release candidates and checkpoints. it's giving ✨controlled chaos✨.

Testing by as many users as possible is desired and requested — the LaTeX team is literally asking, fr fr 🙏. And the way you do it is so easy it's iconic: simply replace the regular engine (e.g., pdflatex) with the -dev engine name (e.g., pdflatex-dev) in your invocations. that's it. that's the whole thing. No changes to source documents should be required. slay 💅

The lualatex-dev format is built with the luahbtex engine, which is the LuaTeX variant with HarfBuzz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarfBuzz) supported for glyph shaping. fancy glyph behavior, no cap 🔥

The latest ltnews document present in latex-dev describes the changes present in -dev compared to the previous official release. E.g., if the official release has a document ltnews42.pdf, then look for ltnews43.pdf in the -dev tree. number go up, lore go deeper 📰✨

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

See tex(1) for details of command-line parsing.

See the individual engines (pdflatex(1), lualatex(1), etc.), for engine-specific options.

ngl that's the entire options section. the engines carry the flags, -dev just carries the mission 🎀

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

• latex(1).
• Package page on CTAN: https://ctan.org/pkg/latex-dev
• The LaTeX home page: https://latex-project.org
• Please report bugs in these -dev versions, like all LaTeX releases, following the procedure at https://www.latex-project.org/bugs.
• Public discussion list for all things TeX: https://lists.tug.org/texhax

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tiny reminder bestie 💜 these are release candidates, not random snapshots — so if you hit something weird, that's literally the point of you being here. tell the LaTeX team! they want the tea ☕😭

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sign-off time 🌈 this whole situation ships under Web2C 2026, dated 25 January 2026 — a real main character of a release date, if you ask me. go forth, swap in your -dev engine, and be the hero the LaTeX release cycle deserves 👑💖