Final Report Template - LaTeX

Note

This template is designed to be a starting point. Feel free to adapt it to your project requirements. Be sure to follow any formatting guidelines provided by your department.

This repository provides a LaTeX template for a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science final project report at California State University, Dominguez Hills. It includes:

• Title page
• Approval page
• Acknowledgements
• Abstract
• Table of contents
• Structured sections (e.g., Methodology, Discussion, Future Work)

📁 Repository Structure

• preamble/ – Package imports & custom macros
• front/ – Title page, abstract, TOC, acknowledgements, etc.
• contents/ – Main sections of the report (e.g., Introduction, Methodology)
• back/ – Appendices (code listings, references)
• figures/ – Images and diagrams
• bin/ – Intermediate build files (created by make)
• Makefile – Build targets for macOS/Linux
• build.bat – Build script for Windows
• template_final_report.tex – Main LaTeX file to compile
• LICENSE – License details

Note

To remove the custom cover page, comment out the \includepdf line in template_final_report.tex or replace cover_page.pdf with your own.

📌 Features

• Clean, professional layout following academic formatting standards
• Automatic table of contents, list of figures, and list of tables
• Custom headers and page numbering
• Section/subsection styling for improved readability
• Code listings with syntax highlighting (via listings package)
• PDF embedding for external documents

🚀 Building the PDF

You can build the report using the CLI. Intermediate files will be placed in the bin/ directory, and the final PDF will appear in the root.

🔧 MacOS & Linux (with make)

Note

Prerequisite: this project requires a working TeX Live installation.

# verify you have pdflatex
pdflatex --version

If it isn’t installed, on macOS run:

brew install --cask mactex    # full TeX Live (~4 GB)
# or for a smaller footprint:
brew install --cask basictex  # BasicTeX (~100 MB)

After cloning this project, navigate to the root directory and run the following:

make

To clean intermediate files:

make clean

🔧 Windows (with PowerShell)

✅ Install MiKTeX

To build this LaTeX project on Windows, you’ll first need to install MiKTeX:

1. Go to the MiKTeX installation guide.
2. Download and install the appropriate Windows version.
3. After installation, close and reopen your terminal to ensure the environment variables are refreshed.

To verify the installation:

pdflatex --version

If you see version info and no error, you're ready to build the project.

▶️ Build the PDF

Navigate to the root of this project directory and run:

.\build.bat

This will generate the PDF in the correct location.

🛠️ Manual Compilation (All OS)

If you'd like to compile manually using pdflatex:

macOS/Linux:

mkdir -p bin
pdflatex -output-directory=bin template_final_report.tex
mv bin/template_final_report.pdf .

Windows (PowerShell):

mkdir bin
pdflatex -output-directory=bin template_final_report.tex
move bin\template_final_report.pdf .

✍️ Customization

Preamble:

• edit preamble/packages.tex & preamble/macros.tex for packages or new commands.

Front Matter:

• update any of the .tex in front/ for your title, abstract, acknowledgements, etc.
• the title page is in front/title_page.tex; update the project title, author, and semester.

Main Content:

• each section lives in contents/. Just open the one you need to edit.

Appendices:

• code listings live in back/code.tex; bibliography in back/references.tex.

To replace the default cover page, comment or remove the \includepdf line in template_final_report.tex.

📄 Example Sections

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Approval Page
• Acknowledgements
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Related Work
• Other Sections
• Methodology
• Discussion
• Conclusion
• Future Work
• References
• Code Snippets

📚 License

This template is free to use and modify for academic purposes. See LICENSE for more details.