# ThuThesis: The Tsinghua University LaTeX Thesis Template, and Who Should Actually Use It

> ThuThesis is the LaTeX class maintained by TUNA for Tsinghua undergraduate, master's, doctoral and postdoctoral documents. It enforces the university's formatting rules, and it assumes you already know LaTeX.

**tuna/thuthesis** — LaTeX Thesis Template for Tsinghua University

- Repository: https://github.com/tuna/thuthesis
- Website: https://www.ctan.org/pkg/thuthesis
- Stars: 5,449 · Forks: 1,168
- Language: TeX
- License: LPPL-1.3c
- Published: 2026-09-22 · Updated: 2026-09-22 · Language: en
- Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/tuna-thuthesis

## The formatting rules ThuThesis takes off your hands

A Tsinghua degree document has to satisfy a fixed set of layout requirements: cover pages, a declaration, Chinese and English abstracts, table of contents conventions, bibliography style, and separate rules for undergraduate research papers, master's theses, doctoral dissertations and postdoctoral reports. ThuThesis packages those rules into a LaTeX class, so the writer supplies content and the class supplies structure. The README describes the goal plainly: a simple and easy-to-use template covering all four document types.

The intended audience is narrow. The README states that the development version on GitHub is for developers and experienced TeX users who need unreleased features, and that no guarantees are provided. The published version is the recommended download. So the project is not trying to onboard someone who has never seen a .tex file; it assumes you can read a class file's errors and fix your own preamble. The README also warns that the template changes frequently and asks users to read the usage documentation and example code completely before asking questions. That is a fair signal about the support model: the documentation is the first line, and the issue tracker is the second.

## How the class, the .dtx source and the bibliography styles fit together

The repository is a documented LaTeX package rather than a folder of loose files. The source of truth is thuthesis.dtx, a literate-programming file that contains both the implementation and the documentation. Running xetex thuthesis.ins extracts the installable pieces from it, producing thuthesis.cls along with dtx-style.sty. The Makefile encodes exactly that dependency: the cls target depends on thuthesis.ins and thuthesis.dtx and runs xetex thuthesis.ins.

Bibliography handling is split across three style families, visible as top-level files: thuthesis-numeric, thuthesis-author-year and thuthesis-bachelor, each shipped as a .bbx, a .cbx and a .bst. Those are biblatex style components plus a BibTeX style, which means the citation format is a choice made in the document setup rather than something the writer formats by hand. A fourth file, thuthesis-inline.cbx, exists for inline citations.

The example document is thuthesis-example.tex, and the README recommends copying or renaming it before you start writing. Configuration lives in thusetup.tex. If you want to see the moving parts before committing to the class, that file and the example are the two to read first.

## Installing ThuThesis from CTAN and building the example

The README gives three download routes for published versions: CTAN, GitHub Releases, and a TUNA mirror of GitHub Releases. CTAN may lag the official release slightly; GitHub Releases is described as the timely channel. If your TeX distribution already carries the package, the README says to update it automatically through the distribution's tooling, naming tlmgr as the example. Manual updating means downloading the release zip and overwriting files such as thuthesis.cls in your thesis directory.

Once the class is available, the repository's Makefile is the shortest path to a working build. The README documents its targets in one line:

```bash
make [{all|thesis|doc|clean|cleanall|distclean}]
```

The target you want first is thesis, which builds thuthesis-example.pdf. Run it before touching any content, because a successful build proves your TeX installation has the fonts and packages the class expects.

```bash
make thesis
```

If the class files are not yet extracted, the Makefile handles that for you by invoking xetex on the installer. You can also do it directly:

```bash
xetex thuthesis.ins
```

The README notes this same command as the second way to obtain a development build from cloned source. After extraction, thuthesis.cls and dtx-style.sty should appear next to the sources.

If you prefer an online editor, the README links a TeXPage template and an Overleaf template. The Overleaf route carries a documented risk: Overleaf reduced free-account compile time, and the README states that projects using this template are relatively large and therefore likely to time out, linking an issue about it. A local TeX installation avoids that ceiling entirely.

## Where ThuThesis stops helping you

The documentation shipped with the class is Chinese only. The README says this directly: the usage documentation and the example are currently available only in Chinese. An English-speaking co-author, or an advisor who wants to check your preamble, cannot read the reference without a translator. The README itself has an English half, but that half covers downloads, licensing and updates, not the class options.

The second constraint is the logo files. thu-fig-logo.pdf and thu-text-logo.pdf come from the Tsinghua University Visual Identity System, and the README states that the maintainers made no modifications other than cropping surrounding whitespace. Both the graphics and the text are registered trademarks of Tsinghua University, and the README restricts their use to this template. If you are building a template for a different university, or a personal document that happens to borrow the cover design, these files are the wrong starting point and the licence does not cover that use.

Third, the README is explicit that ThuThesis distributed anywhere other than the listed channels is not an official version. Forks and repackaged derivatives exist, and the project's position is that using them is at your own risk. That matters when a search result offers a convenient zip that did not come from CTAN, GitHub Releases or the TUNA mirror.

## ThuThesis compared with UcaThesis, Dissertate and writing LaTeX from scratch

The related searches around this project include UcaThesis and Dissertate, which are the natural comparisons, and the difference is institutional rather than technical. UcaThesis targets the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, so its cover pages, heading conventions and bibliography rules encode a different institution's requirements. Dissertate is a general-purpose dissertation template not tied to one university's formatting office. Choosing between them is not a quality judgement; it is a question of which institution's rules your document must satisfy. ThuThesis is the only one of the three that carries Tsinghua's trademarked cover assets and the four Tsinghua document types.

The other alternative is writing a plain LaTeX document with article or report and formatting everything yourself. That is viable if you enjoy fighting with spacing, but the class exists precisely because the formatting rules are numerous and change. The cost of the class is that you inherit its assumptions and its release cadence; the benefit is that you do not re-derive the cover layout under deadline.

## Licence, updates and what a version bump costs you

ThuThesis is licensed under the LaTeX Project Public License v1.3c. The README states that any use violating that licence will be recorded on a Hall of Shame issue page. This is not legal advice, but the practical reading is that LPPL expects derived works to be renamed if they are modified and redistributed in ways the licence does not permit, and the project is actively watching for violations. If you plan to fork the class for another institution, read the LPPL text before you publish anything.

Upgrade cost depends on which channel you used. With automatic updates through a TeX distribution, the class changes underneath you when you next run tlmgr, and the README warns that the template changes frequently. The safe habit is to pin your thesis to a known release: download the zip, keep the extracted thuthesis.cls in your project directory, and update deliberately rather than mid-chapter. The manual path in the README is exactly that, overwriting the existing class files from a release archive.

The repository is not archived, and the most recent push recorded for it is 2026-08-18, with v7.7.1 released on 2026-05-26. Releases have not been uniform in spacing: v7.6.0 came on 2025-03-28, then v7.7.0 on 2026-05-10. That gap is worth knowing if you are waiting on a specific fix. For developers building the class itself, the Makefile exposes check and dist targets that require a version argument and verify the version string appears in thuthesis.dtx before release, so the release process is scripted rather than manual.

## Conclusion

Adopt ThuThesis if you are writing a Tsinghua thesis and already compile LaTeX documents without help, because the class encodes the university's formatting rules and the maintainers ship a matching example file. Do not adopt it if you have never used LaTeX, or if your institution is not Tsinghua, since the logos are registered trademarks restricted to this template. Before writing a chapter, check that your TeX distribution's CTAN copy matches the release you intend to cite, and run make thesis on the unmodified example to confirm your toolchain produces thuthesis-example.pdf.

## FAQ

### How do I write a thesis in LaTeX with ThuThesis?

Download a published version from CTAN, GitHub Releases or the TUNA mirror, then copy or rename thuthesis-example.tex to a meaningful name and start writing in that file, as the README recommends. The usage documentation and example are currently available only in Chinese.

### Can I use ThuThesis on Overleaf?

Yes, the README links an Overleaf template. It also warns that Overleaf reduced free-account compile time and that projects using this template are relatively large and therefore likely to time out.

### How do I update ThuThesis to a newer version?

The README gives two routes: automatic updates from CTAN through your TeX distribution's tooling, such as tlmgr, or manual replacement of files like thuthesis.cls with those from a downloaded release zip. The development version can be obtained by cloning the source and running xetex thuthesis.ins.

### Which document types does ThuThesis cover?

The README lists general undergraduate research papers, master's theses, doctoral dissertations and postdoctoral reports. Bibliography styles are split accordingly, with separate numeric, author-year and bachelor style files.

## Sources

- [License: LPPL-1.3c](https://github.com/tuna/thuthesis/blob/master/LICENSE)
- [Project website](https://www.ctan.org/pkg/thuthesis)
- [README](https://github.com/tuna/thuthesis/blob/master/README.md)
- [Releases](https://github.com/tuna/thuthesis/releases)
- [tuna/thuthesis on GitHub](https://github.com/tuna/thuthesis)

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Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/tuna-thuthesis