Let quarto render not clear target folder entirely

[psychelzh]

I am treating the rendered website folder as a submodule, so every time when I render the site, I need to initiate that submodule again, because the render process will remove the submodule entirely. Is there a way to keep those files specific to git?

[mcanouil]

You need to specify website resources, see https://quarto.org/docs/websites/website-tools.html#site-resources.

[psychelzh]

Thank you very much. The first thing I tried is to add .git to resources. But unfortunately, there is some permission issue here:

Rendering:
[1/3] index.qmd
[2/3] posts\compare_modality.qmd
[3/3] posts\main_results.qmd

ERROR: PermissionDenied: 拒绝访问。 (os error 5), remove 'D:\OneDrive\Documents\Research\brain-intelligence\g-factor\docs\.git\modules\docs\objects\04\2e2dc36771b29fae14b72e5798fc3e69138228'

PermissionDenied: 拒绝访问。 (os error 5), remove 'D:\OneDrive\Documents\Research\brain-intelligence\g-factor\docs\.git\modules\docs\objects\04\2e2dc36771b29fae14b72e5798fc3e69138228'
    at Object.removeSync (deno:runtime/js/30_fs.js:157:9)
    at copyFileSync (file:///C:/PROGRA~1/Quarto/bin/quarto.js:58534:14)
    at copyTo (file:///C:/PROGRA~1/Quarto/bin/quarto.js:58481:9)
    at doCopy (file:///C:/PROGRA~1/Quarto/bin/quarto.js:58511:9)
    at copyFileIfNewer (file:///C:/PROGRA~1/Quarto/bin/quarto.js:58528:9)
    at copyResourceFile (file:///C:/PROGRA~1/Quarto/bin/quarto.js:59238:5)
    at file:///C:/PROGRA~1/Quarto/bin/quarto.js:86961:25
    at Set.forEach (<anonymous>)
    at file:///C:/PROGRA~1/Quarto/bin/quarto.js:86958:30
    at Array.forEach (<anonymous>)

[mcanouil]

It's a well known issue with cloud drive and external drive.

In addition, it's not a great idea to have version control within a tool that has version control.

[psychelzh]

Thanks. Yes, it is probably because .git is also in the main directory, and quarto tries to copy that to the submodule. Maybe just as what you said, treating the generated folder as a submodule is not a great idea.

[mcanouil]

My point was mostly on OneDrive + Git.
OneDrive (and most of cloud storage services) does version control, not the same way, but still.

But, Git submodule even if they seem nice, they have a lot of caveats and in my opinion should be used after really thinking about it.

Overall, moving your project out or OneDrive, adding your external resources to resources yaml key in _quarto.yml or in the header of relevant document should solve your issue.