VimTex + Sioyek setup for forward and reverse search in WSL

About

Forward and reverse search are two useful features that allow you to jump directly between a line of source code in a LaTeX file to it’s corresponding position in the output PDF (as well as vice versa). Having been standard features in online/dedicated editors like TeXStudio or Overleaf, forward/reverse search have also made their way to (neo)vim via the excellent plugin VimTex. Unfortunately for WSL users like myself, however, this integration seems to interact poorly with the Linux/Windows exectuable bridge. After trying several PDF viewers, the only one I could find that worked with my setup was sioyek, though some extra effort (including submitting a patch!) was required in setting it up. Here’s a quick tldr of the configuration that I’m currently using.

Requirements

It’s unlikely that any of these version numbers are hard requirements, but I’m listing them here in case they’re useful for troubleshooting.

• Neovim installed under WSL, version ≥ 0.6.1
• VimTex installed under the neovim version above, version ≥ 2.12
• Sioyek installed on windows, built after Feb 19 2023 (see below for a link to prebuilt binaries)

Setup

init.vim

Add the following three lines to your init.vim

let g:vimtex_view_method = 'sioyek'
let g:vimtex_view_sioyek_exe='sioyek.exe'
let g:vimtex_callback_progpath = 'wsl nvim'

Sioyek config

• Download a build of sioyek newer than Feb 2023; as of this post, this does not include any of the prebuilt binaries from the main repo, so you’ll need to grab a copy of sioyek-release-windows.zip from the experimental builds
• Add the executable to your path (see here for a tutorial)
• Add the following line to prefs.config

  vimtex_wsl_fix 1
  

and that’s it!