FeX
I created a framework for LaTeX projects called Fex (which comes from “Framework for TeX”).
Basically, it allows you to specify the style document you want (right now I just have one correspoding to conference papers, but soon I’ll also have one for homework), type `make`, and build your PDF.
The main point is that I can keep improving formatting issues, macros, and so on, and just save them in one central place, so I can easily re-use them on many projects and start new projects very quickly.
I also have a bib file in there that I plan to keep adding to over time.
Another nice feature is that within your project directory, your tex files live in nice places like tex/, meta/ (where the title, authors, style, etc. are specified), and figs/. There’s also a fex/ directory for all the fex stuff, which you don’t normally need to bother with.
I made this for myself and will probably never release it publicly, but if anyone wants it, let me know.
I did use FeX today to produce a document, and it made it a much easier/smoother process. There was very, very little debugging to do, and what debugging I did do, went towards modifying the FeX source, so that it won’t be necessary again. So far, my little experiment is making it a breeze to write beautiful documents in LaTeX, whereas it was kind of a pain in the past (for me).