quarto-dev / quarto-dev/quarto-cli
DEBUG log level prepends "Quarto version: X.Y.Z" line to stderr for all commands
@cderv is already working on this.
Since May 20, 2026.
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Description
When QUARTO_LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG is set (or GitHub Actions debug mode auto-elevates the level), every Quarto subcommand prepends a bare Quarto version: X.Y.Z line to stderr — including commands whose stderr is the data channel that consumers parse, such as quarto list extensions.
Reproduction:
$ QUARTO_LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG quarto list extensions
Quarto version: 1.9.37
Id Version Contributes
quarto-ext/fontawesome 1.3.0 shortcodes
The same line shows up on error output of other commands (quarto inspect, quarto render with a fatal error, etc.).
Source of the diagnostic:
The log level is auto-elevated to DEBUG when GitHub Actions runs with debug logging on (RUNNER_DEBUG=1):
Impact: any tool that parses Quarto CLI stderr breaks under DEBUG. The R quarto package's quarto_list_extensions() parses quarto list extensions stderr with read.table(header = TRUE); under DEBUG, the prepended version line is consumed as the header row and downstream code fails with argument 1 is not a vector. We hit this in quarto-dev/quarto-r CI any time the workflow is re-run with debug logging.
We could:
- Route this diagnostic through the structured log handler (with level prefix and timestamp) so it lands in
--logoutput rather than as a bare line onstderr, or - Gate it on
TRACErather thanDEBUG, sinceDEBUGis auto-enabled by CI debug mode and a number of code paths legitimately wantDEBUGwithout the version preamble polluting stdout/stderr consumers.
Either approach keeps the diagnostic available without breaking programmatic consumers of CLI output.
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