ERROR: Template partial was not found

[pieterprovoost]

Bug description

I'm not able to render a minimal dashboard with quarto-cli 1.4.534, presumable due to incorrect partials path resolution. quarto render test.qmd results in:

ERROR: Template partial /Users/pieter/Desktop/quarto/Applications/quarto/share/formats/dashboard/title-block.html was not found. Please confirm that the path to the file is correct.

Stack trace:
    at file:///Applications/quarto/bin/quarto.js:41469:19
    at Array.flatMap (<anonymous>)
    at readPartials (file:///Applications/quarto/bin/quarto.js:41463:20)
    at runPandoc (file:///Applications/quarto/bin/quarto.js:68818:30)
    at eventLoopTick (ext:core/01_core.js:183:11)
    at async renderPandoc (file:///Applications/quarto/bin/quarto.js:70020:26)
    at async Object.onRender (file:///Applications/quarto/bin/quarto.js:77193:36)
    at async renderFileInternal (file:///Applications/quarto/bin/quarto.js:77170:17)
    at async renderFiles (file:///Applications/quarto/bin/quarto.js:76994:17)
    at async renderProject (file:///Applications/quarto/bin/quarto.js:77321:25)

Source:

---
title: "Testing dashboard"
author: "Test Author"
format: dashboard
---

Test.

Steps to reproduce

No response

Expected behavior

No response

Actual behavior

No response

Your environment

• OS: macOS Sonoma 14.2.1

Quarto check output

Quarto 1.4.534
[✓] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
      Pandoc version 3.1.11: OK
      Dart Sass version 1.69.5: OK
      Deno version 1.37.2: OK
[✓] Checking versions of quarto dependencies......OK
[✓] Checking Quarto installation......OK
      Version: 1.4.534
      Path: /Applications/quarto/bin

[✓] Checking tools....................OK
      TinyTeX: (not installed)
      Chromium: (not installed)

[✓] Checking LaTeX....................OK
      Using: Installation From Path
      Path: /Library/TeX/texbin
      Version: 2023

[✓] Checking basic markdown render....OK

[✓] Checking Python 3 installation....OK
      Version: 3.9.6
      Path: /Users/pieter/.pyenv/versions/3.9.6/bin/python3
      Jupyter: 4.10.0
      Kernels: python3

[✓] Checking Jupyter engine render....OK

[✓] Checking R installation...........OK
      Version: 4.2.2
      Path: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources
      LibPaths:
        - /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.2-arm64/Resources/library
      knitr: 1.43
      rmarkdown: 2.23

[✓] Checking Knitr engine render......OK

[mcanouil]

I cannot reproduce using the latest development version.
From Git history I did not see any changes related to something like this.

[cscheid]

Something strange is happening with paths here. Note that we're attempting to resolve the title-block partial in this path:

/Users/pieter/Desktop/quarto/Applications/quarto/share/formats/dashboard/title-block.html

While quarto itself is located at

file:///Applications/quarto/bin/quarto.js:41463:20

I don't understand how that could be happening, even with multiple Quarto installations. Do you have a non-standard environment variable setup?

The code for readPartials is:

export function readPartials(
  metadata: Metadata,
  inputDir?: string,
) {
  if (typeof (metadata?.[kTemplatePartials]) === "string") {
    metadata[kTemplatePartials] = [metadata[kTemplatePartials]];
  }
  const result = (metadata?.[kTemplatePartials] || []) as string[];

  inputDir = inputDir ? normalizePath(inputDir) : undefined;
  const resolvePath = (path: string) => {
    if (!inputDir || isAbsolute(path)) {
      return path;
    } else {
      return join(inputDir, path);
    }
  };

  return result.flatMap((path) => {
    const result = [];
    for (const walk of expandGlobSync(resolvePath(path))) {
      result.push(walk.path);
    }
    if (!isGlob(path) && result.length === 0) {
      throw new Error(
        `Template partial ${path} was not found. Please confirm that the path to the file is correct.`,
      );
    }
    return result;
  });
}

It seems that something is confusing the resolvePath call, but I don't understand what that could be.

[cderv]

@cscheid I am not a MAC user and can't test but

• inputDir = inputDir ? normalizePath(inputDir) : undefined; : I believe this will be the input directory which is probably the /Users/pieter/Desktop/quarto/ part

• return join(inputDir, path); which get appended if path is not seen as absolute by isAbsolute somehow

In this case I believe isAbsolute should be true on the partial path

That would explained the wrong built path to me...

What do you think ?

@dragonstyle did we deal with something similar recently with absolute path being not detected ? But it was on windows I think.

[pieterprovoost]

@cscheid I don't have a non-standard install as far as I'm aware, this is a fresh first-time installation. I did try the 1.4.451 pre-release build now which works fine, but it breaks when I install 1.4.534 again.

[dragonstyle]

I'll have a look at this- I added a check for template resolution that now throws an error instead of silently failing, so this is something likely related to non-developer install locations. I'll update here shortly.

[dragonstyle]

Well I spent some time testing with a variety of local installations and I can't get this to happen either.

A couple questions:

1. When you run which quarto | xargs ls -ln what is the path that you see?

$ which quarto | xargs ls -ln
lrwxr-xr-x  1 0  80  31 Jan  3 12:28 /usr/local/bin/quarto -> /Applications/quarto/bin/quarto

2. Could there be a path cached in your shell/terminal that is somehow confusing us? Could you try a fresh terminal session and see whether it still reproduces?

I'm thinking that 1.4.451 likely 'works' in the sense that it doesn't error, but it is likely silently using this incorrect path and failing to properly render the title block for the dashboard.

[pieterprovoost]

I'm having the same problem with the development version, and it looks like the issue is here: https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/blob/main/src/command/render/template.ts#L81.

[dragonstyle]

That seems correct- the project change was a recent one which likely introduced this. Thanks for clue and pointer to the code. I'll test with a project!