Short version

Is it possible to use standalone to produce externally my figures with overlays and include them directly in my main document ?

More details

Using the answers of the question Beamer overlays, tikz external and custom file name and Integrating latexmk and TikZ external mode=list and make I have been able to outsource my Tikz pictures while using overlay.

More precisely, I have the following tex files

% tikz/fig.tex



begin{tikzpicture}transform canvas={scale=0.5}



    node[visible on=<1->]  at (0,0) {Overlay 1};



    node[visible on=<2>]  at (2,0) {Overlay 2};



end{tikzpicture}

% main.tex



usepackage{tikz}

usetikzlibrary{external}

tikzexternalize[mode=list and make,prefix=tikz/]

tikzset{

  invisible/.style={opacity=0},

  visible on/.style={alt={#1{}{invisible}}},

  alt/.code args={<#1>#2#3}{%

    alt<#1>{pgfkeysalso{#2}}{pgfkeysalso{#3}} % pgfkeysalso doesn't change the path

  },

}

makeatletter

newcommand*{overlaynumber}{numberbeamer@slideinframe}

tikzset{

  beamer externalizing/.style={%

    execute at end picture={%

      tikzifexternalizing{%

        ifbeamer@anotherslide

        pgfexternalstorecommand{stringglobalstringbeamer@anotherslidetrue}%

        fi

      }{}%

    }%

  },

  external/optimize=false

}

letorig@tikzsetnextfilename=tikzsetnextfilename

renewcommandtikzsetnextfilename[1]{orig@tikzsetnextfilename{#1-overlaynumber}}

makeatother



tikzset{every picture/.style={beamer externalizing}}



begin{document}

begin{frame}{Example}

    begin{figure}

        only<1>{tikzsetnextfilename{fig}}

        only<2>{tikzsetnextfilename{fig}}

        input{tikz/fig.tikz}

    end{figure}

end{frame}

end{document}

Then, I can use latexmk with the following .latexmkrc

our %externalflag = ();



$lualatex = 'internal mylualatex %O %S %B';



sub mylualatex {

  print "Hello worldn";

  our %externalflag;

  my $n = scalar(@_);

  my @args = @_[0 .. $n - 2];

  my $base = $_[$n - 1];



  system 'lualatex', @args;

  if ($? != 0) {

    return $?

  }

  if ( !defined $externalflag->{$base} ) {

    $externalflag->{$base} = 1;

    system ("$make -j8 -f $base.makefile");

  }

  return $?;

}

and it will produce all the figures (in my example two because I have two overlays) in parallel using make. The only issue now is that I would like to use standalone to be able to work directly on my picture and not recompiling the whole document each time.

I saw in the doc of standalone that it should be possible to generate frames with standaloneframe, but it is not really what I want since I want only pictures, and I did not succeed in including the resulting frame in my main document using includestandalone anyway.