Btukfyl

I've just started using arara and I'm trying to write a custom rule that would allow me to compile documents without a preamble (by using a separate preamble template).

This is my first attempt:

!config

identifier: myrule

name: MyRule

commands:

    - cat preamble.tex "@{file}" | pdflatex

arguments: 

When I try to use it, however, I get this:

cat: |: No such file or directory

cat: pdflatex: No such file or directory

FAILURE

So it seems like the pipe character and the pdflatex command are being passed as arguments to cat, instead of the cat output being redirected to pdflatex (as when I run something like cat preamble.tex file.tex | pdflatex from the command line, for instance).

So is there a way to make the command redirection work with arara?

This isn't really an answer to my question about arara, but I followed @cfr's suggestion and wrote a script to compile those files for me and it's working pretty well, so I thought I'd share it in case someone else is interested:

https://github.com/dbmrq/solo

There's probably no point, since the script itself already handles many use cases, but it's also easy to use it in an arara rule:

!config

identifier: solo

name: Solo

command:

    - solo "@{file}"

arguments: