Quarto Publish action fails when format: pdf is defined in _quarto.yml

[kbenoit]

I followed all of the instructions for setting up the GitHub Action for publishing (with frozen computations) from https://quarto.org/docs/publishing/github-pages.html#github-action. This failed however with the same error reported in #29 (see this failed run for instance). I solved it by removing the pdf format from my _quarto.yml per the suggestion by @clente on that issue.

https://github.com/quanteda/Text-Analysis-Using-R/blob/24b0a189d9a0075ea60ad48b00076ccfa8bc79dd/_quarto.yml#L75-L87

But then in RStudio, the menu option to build the pdf version disappears, which is a shame. It would be nice to retain this option but be able to define the quarto render/publish actions in https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-actions/blob/main/publish/action.yml to render HTML only.

Thanks for such an amazing piece of software!! 👏🙏👏

[cderv]

Thanks a lot for this report.

It seems setting the pdf format somehow trigger the need for jsonlite and some R process. We'll need to look closer into that

[cderv]

By the way, the first errors in your actions

Error in loadNamespace(x) : there is no package called ‘jsonlite’
Calls: .main ... loadNamespace -> withRestarts -> withOneRestart -> doWithOneRestart
Execution halted
WARNING: Unable to perform code-link (code-link requires R packages rmarkdown, downlit, and xml2)

are because using code-link requires R and some packages, even if you use freeze. This is an unfortunates limitation for now in the way downlit is applied.

[kbenoit]

Commenting out the format: pdf: ... part of _quarto.yml eliminated that error so it seems to be something that is only called when rendering the pdf. Is there a way to edit the GH action script to render the html only, and not everything defined as a format in _quarto.yml?

[cderv]

Thanks for the precision, I will look into that then. You have HTML also activated so I thought it was linked. I'll try to reproduce

Is there a way to edit the GH action script to render the html only, and not everything defined as a format in _quarto.yml?

We mention this very briefly in this document :
https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-actions/blob/main/examples/example-04-other-workflows.md#using-quarto-actions-other-workflows

Publish action seems magic because it will render for you... but to all format. This is a simplification we did for v2, and the v1 examples of the action were simplified.

For a single format, you just need to adopt a two step process:

• Use the render action to render to you desired format
• Then use the publish action with render: false configuration

[cscheid]

@cderv Let's figure out a way to make v2 support single formats

[cderv]

I see two main ways:

• quarto publish at CLI needs to offer way to pass a format to render instead of just all or nothing
• We could handle this in the publish action by:
  • Offering a configuration for choosing a format
  • If provided, we run quarto render before doing a quarto publish --no-render
  • If no provided we run directly the quarto publish command

I think the latter would work right ?

The former is a bigger change in the CLI, but I can think of some usage were quarto publish --to html would be useful to have even if you have a pdf version defined. If you think this is worth tracking, we could have a specific issue for that in Quarto CLI side.

[cscheid]

Hm, I misunderstood your earlier message. We already support "render: false". So all we need to do is update the documentation.

[cscheid]

Even more to the point, our documentation already mentions this workflow as well. We need to make this more prominent.

[cscheid]

I made a number of tweaks to the documentation so we have explicit mentions of single-format rendering now.

[cderv]

Ok. So the two step process is indeed the way with the two actions. That is fine !

Thanks for the update to the doc

[cderv]

We just have two places I think that we may need to merge:

• https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-actions/blob/main/examples/example-06-no-render.md that you linked
• https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-actions/blob/main/examples/example-04-other-workflows.md that I linked above before

I added mention to this already last time it was asked, but I will update based on your recent change.

Maybe we should merge both examples

[kbenoit]

OK, I redid my publish.yml and _quarto.yml as you suggested above (at https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-actions/blob/main/examples/example-07-publish-single-format.md).

It seems to work although I am still seeing the jsonlite errors.

• My revised publish.yml
• _quarto.yml with pdf turned on again
• Successful build: https://github.com/quanteda/Text-Analysis-Using-R/actions/workflows/publish.yml
• But still seeing jsonlite errors that do not appear to affect the HTML render: https://github.com/quanteda/Text-Analysis-Using-R/runs/8027544320?check_suite_focus=true

[cscheid]

You still seem to have code-link: true in your HTML project, though, right? https://github.com/quanteda/Text-Analysis-Using-R/blob/main/_quarto.yml#L74

code-link: true uses R and the jsonlite package, like @cderv mentioned above.

[kbenoit]

You're right - I disabled code-link and now it builds without error.

There is a warning about a ] character though that looks like something in the action.
https://github.com/quanteda/Text-Analysis-Using-R/runs/8028121243?check_suite_focus=true#step:4:61

Thanks for all the help!