Pandoc: "Error producing PDF" when converting from TeX to PDF

[moigagoo]

Consider this simplest TeX source:

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}
  This is a test.
\end{document}

When converting it to PDF, the following output is shown:

$ pandoc -o test.pdf test.tex
Error producing PDF.

This is all output I get.

Pandoc version:

$ pandoc -v
pandoc.exe 2.1
Compiled with pandoc-types 1.17.3, texmath 0.10.1, skylighting 0.5.1
Default user data directory: C:\Users\moigagoo\AppData\Roaming\pandoc
Copyright (C) 2006-2018 John MacFarlane
Web:  http://pandoc.org
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is no warranty, not even for merchantability or fitness
for a particular purpose.

Windows 10 version 1709 build 17063.

MikTeX version:

$ mpm --version
MiKTeX Package Manager 2.9.6538 (MiKTeX 2.9.6530)
Copyright (C) 2005-2017 Christian Schenk
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

[moigagoo]

I discovered this issue on a different and much larger document, but the error is exactly the same.

[njbart]

Not a valid LaTeX document – try prepending \documentclass{article}.

[moigagoo]

Not a valid LaTeX document – try prepending \documentclass{article}.

The result is the same. I'll add this line to the original issue description, thanks!

[mb21]

You don't need pandoc to go from latex to pdf, use pdflatex (or similar) directly.

Also see http://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#creating-a-pdf

[moigagoo]

You don't need pandoc to go from latex to pdf, use pdflatex (or similar) directly.

Pandoc offers an extremely convenient way to customize PDF output with TeX templates. I have a huge document with a custom corporate template, so I'd rather stick to Pandoc.

In fact, I'm very much surprised that you suggest I don't use Pandoc for a task Pandoc was designed to solve.

[mb21]

Sure you _can_, however pandoc only supports a subset of TeX. Also, from the manual:

To debug the PDF creation, it can be useful to look at the intermediate representation: instead of -o test.pdf, use for example -s -o test.tex to output the generated LaTeX. You can then test it with pdflatex test.tex.

[moigagoo]

My bad, sorry for an asshole-ish comment... The issue seems to be caused by incorrectly installed MiKTeX, because pdflatex crashes with an error. When launched form pwsh, however, it doesn't throw any errors, that's why I couldn't spot the issue earlier.

Thanks!