I want to build a Markdown to PDF converter running on Heroku using Pandoc and LaTeX that I can send markdown to and it will return a PDF. On my local machine this worked fine without any problem. I am using Pandoc 2.7.3 and pdfTeX 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.20 (TeX Live 2019).
Now I wanted to host this on heroku, but I just get errors for missing files when I run the pandoc command because the versions are old or don't match.
What is the easiest way to get this to run?
Heroku obviously has some limitations on the slug size (500mb), so a full tex install is not possible. It would need to be a smaller subset.
There are Buildpacks for pandoc and TeX Live, but espacially the TeX Live buildpacks seem to be outdated and is not compatible with the pandoc one if you try to run the latest version. The Apt package seems also to maintain only an older version. Is a docker image maybe the answer? https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/container-registry-and-runtime
I am not necessarily searching for installation instructions, but rather in which way you would handle that. I am a web developer, not a dev ops, so i am really lost in this LaTeX install mess.