Support for "time" Unix command

[matteofg]

I would like to set a tex-engine by exploiting the time Unix command, like

time pdflatex sample

How can TeXwork be configured correctly?

[stloeffler]

In the following, I'm assuming you are using Linux (or possibly macOS, though I didn't test that).
The easiest way is to add a new typesetting tool (under Edit > Preferences... > Typesetting), give it an arbitrary name (e.g., "timed pdflatex"), specify time as the program, and add the two arguments pdflatex and $fullname.
Note that this will use /usr/bin/time instead of bash's built-in time command and as such might have slightly different output. To get more readable output, you might want to add an additional -p as a first argument, or potentially specify a custom format with -f.
To run the typesetting through bash (and consequently use bash's built-in time command) instead, you could specify /usr/bin/bash (or equivalent) as program with the arguments -c and time pdflatex $fullname.

[matteofg]

I'm assuming you are using Linux (or possibly macOS, though I didn't test that)

I use a macos arm... sorry I didn't specify that.

The easiest way is to add a new typesetting tool (under Edit > Preferences... > Typesetting), give it an arbitrary name (e.g., "timed pdflatex"), specify time as the program, and add the two arguments pdflatex and $fullname.

With the following settings

I get this response:

time: pdflatex: No such file or directory
        0.00 real         0.00 user         0.00 sys

To run the typesetting through bash (and consequently use bash's built-in time command) instead, you could specify /usr/bin/bash (or equivalent) as program with the arguments -c and time pdflatex $fullname.

With the following settings

I get this response:

zsh:1: command not found: pdflatex
pdflatex latex-test.tex  0.00s user 0.00s system 26% cpu 0.003 total

[stloeffler]

OK, so it seems time is executed, but can't find pdflatex. You might have to specify the full path to pdflatex then, as macOS is particularly notorious about not setting up environmental variables in a helpful manner (especially $PATH needed to find programs - something TeXworks has to work around when executing the primary program, but it doesn't change parameters of course).

[matteofg]

Ok... entering the full path of pdflatex everything works well.

Thanks!