How can I achieve that Kile updates the pdf automatically in certain intervals?

Version: Kile 2.1.3 on Ubuntu 13.10

  • Not an answer but anyway: Have you looked at gummi? (As to your kile question, I think the answer is no - that is why I use gummi if I need to see the output often. Sometimes I just edit a particular section, eg a tikz picture, in gummi while doing the rest of the work in kile) – vaettchen Nov 10 '13 at 8:51

The latest stable version of Kile (2.1.3) does not offer automatic updates. You can however update to the development version (Kile 3 beta 1) to get automatic updates and live preview.

The dev version is in beta from quite some time and I use it in my production environment without issues. It is still a beta by the way, so there may be some rough edges.

To install the beta version of Kile in ubuntu you need to add this PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kile/livepreview
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install kile

As the PPA dev says, if you're updgrading from Kile 2.1.3 then

it is recommended to reset the configuration of the tools. In order to do so, open the tool configuration section in the configuration dialog, which can be found under Settings / Configure Kile... / Tools / Build, and press the "Restore Default Tools..."

For other Linux distros, the generic instructions to build Kile from source are:

git clone --depth 1 git://anongit.kde.org/kile
mkdir build
cd build
sudo make install

You need the build tools provided by your distro, see the distro documentation to check how to install them.

After you got the beta version, to enable automatic updates go to

Settings -> 
Configure Kile -> 
Live Preview -> 
Compile documents whenever there are changes after <insert milliseconds>
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  • Thanks! I experienced some problems with the preview of the beta versions on Windows 7. In particular, there were problems when I used the todo notes package (the viewer didn't jump to the line I was currently working on in the editor but to another line). Moreover, the program crashed as soon as I included a bibliography. It didn't when preview was turned off. But, as I said, this was on Windows. – lpdbw Nov 10 '13 at 11:49

The version of Kile provided by ppa:kile/livepreview is broken in Ubuntu (crashes during initial tool list configuration), so you'll need to build an up to date version of (which will include the live preview feature) from source.

To build from source in Ubuntu (original, generic instructions here):

# Install a LaTex back end
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install texlive
# Install build tools and library dependencies
sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake git okular okular-dev libpoppler-qt5-dev kinit-dev libkf5khtml-dev libkf5parts-dev libkf5texteditor-dev kdoctools-dev libkf5crash-dev
mkdir ~/kile-livepreview
cd ~/kile-livepreview
# Get the Kile source and build (using a shallow clone to save space)
git clone --depth 1 git://anongit.kde.org/kile src -b master
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../src -DCMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH=$HOME/kile-livepreview/install/include/ -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/kile-livepreview/install
make install -j 2

Currently (July 2016) Ubuntu has outdated Okular cmake files, so Okular5 has to be changed to Okular in CMakeLists.txt

Then create a file named ~/kile-livepreview/run.sh with the following contents and set it as executable (chmod +x ~/kile-livepreview/run.sh).

export KDEDIRS=$HOME/kile-livepreview/install/:$KDEDIRS
export KDEHOME=$HOME/kile-livepreview/.kde
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/kile-livepreview/install/lib64:$HOME/kile-livepreview/install/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH


Lastly, for a convenient launcher create the file ~/.local/share/applications/kile-livepreview.desktop with the following contents, taking care to substitute in your username (this is adapted from the corresponding provided by Ubuntu's Kile package):

[Desktop Entry]
Exec=/home/[YOUR USERNAME HERE]/kile-livepreview/run.sh %U
Icon=/home/[YOUR USERNAME HERE]/kile-livepreview/install/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/kile.png
Comment=(La)TeX development environment
GenericName=LaTeX Frontend

To update:

cd ~/kile-livepreview/src
git pull
cd ../build
make install
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