posit-dev / posit-dev/positron
Install Quarto and Pandoc (and set RSTUDIO_PANDOC) in dev builds
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- Dominant language
- TypeScript
- Stars
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- Avg merge
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- Merged PRs (30d)
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Description
Today, all features that depend on Quarto and Pandoc do not work in dev builds, because we only bundle Quarto and Pandoc in release builds.
This is somewhat inconvenient for testing features that depend on Quarto and Pandoc, such as the Quarto extension and LLM tools that use pandoc to convert things to Markdown for consumption by the model.
Proposal:
- Have a task that runs as part of
npm installthat, in dev mode only, installs quarto and pandoc to a folder inside the repository - Update the logic that looks for quarto/pandoc so that it looks in this folder (note that some of the quarto & pandoc locator logic lives in the quarto extension)
- Ensure
RSTUDIO_PANDOCis set in dev builds to this bundled pandoc if present
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by locating the npm install task and the Quarto extension's Quarto and Pandoc locator logic. Trace how dev builds currently resolve these tools and set RSTUDIO_PANDOC. Done means dev-only installation, repository-local lookup, and the bundled Pandoc environment setting work for the affected features.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- typescript
- Domain
- build-system, tooling
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 42/100