Behavior of `quarto_create_project()` differs from `quarto create-project` since the former "requires" the creation of a new directory

[davidkane9]

I am used to creating the framework for a Quarto website by running, from the Terminal, this command:

quarto create-project "." --type website

This just dumps the required files into the current directory. I had hoped that, from the R Console, this command:

quarto_create_project(type = "website")

would behave the same. But, it fails because, as documented, you need to supply a "name" argument, which becomes a newly created directory in which the required files are placed.

I think that the behavior of quarto_create_project() should be more similar to the behavior of quarto create-project by default. At the least, it should be possible to somehow use quarto_create_project() to produce the required files in the current directory, without creating a new directory.

I was able to accomplish this by running:

quarto_create_project(name = ".", type = "website")

That works. But should it?

[cderv]

I think that the behavior of quarto_create_project() should be more similar to the behavior of quarto create-project by default.

The CLI command to create project is now

quarto create project

This is updated in the documentation https://quarto.org/docs/projects/quarto-projects.html#creating-projects

and in help of CLI

  Description:

    Quarto CLI

  Options:

    -h, --help     - Show this help.
    -V, --version  - Show the version number for this program.

  Commands:

    render     [input] [args...]     - Render files or projects to various document types.
    preview    [file] [args...]      - Render and preview a document or website project.
    serve      [input]               - Serve a Shiny interactive document.
    create     [type] [commands...]  - Create a Quarto project or extension

This function does not have a default for name. If not provided, it won't work.

That is why I made quarto_create_project() default match the default of the CLI command.

And this works

quarto_create_project(name = ".", type = "website")

because CLI works also

quarto create project website . 

[davidkane9]

Thanks for the reply. And apologies for not realizing that Quarto CLI had changed! So, it seems like my complaint is more about Quarto CLI. Prior to version 1.4, I could use

quarto create-project --type website --title "My Website"

and it would create, in the current directory, what I wanted. But now, with version 1.4, that no longer works. In fact, there is no way to specify both a title of the project and a different location for the project at the same time. This is not convenient (for me).

As you point out, this command works with 1.4

quarto create project website .

but you end up with a project for which the title is ".", which is highly unlikely to be what you want, and no way (?) to specify a different title.

[cderv]

but you end up with a project for which the title is ".", which is highly unlikely to be what you want, and no way (?) to specify a different title.

Yeah definitely agree that this is not ideal.

Can you open an issue in quarto-cli repo about --title having disappeared from the command line ?

I don't remember why this has changed this way, maybe it was just lost in the migration to the quarto create project command.

Thank you

[davidkane9]

Done! quarto-dev/quarto-cli#8540