setting and using the project/working directory for rendering

[shaenzi]

Hi,
I am currently struggling to run my code from the base project directory when I use quarto render. What I have done so far:

• Following the project basics, I have run quarto create-projectin my already existing repo, which created a _quarto.yml file, consisting of a project title
• I have a .qmd file in a subfolder of the base project (subfolder is called notebooks), where I specify the execute-dir as project, as described here
• then I render this document, with the code printing the working directory, which still is the subfolder, not the main folder of the repo.

Did I miss anything in setting the project up?
Context info: running python, using VSCode, with a jupyter kernel.
thanks!

[shaenzi]

Additional info: the project: execute-dir does not seem to have any effect. Same behaviour with project and file, and strange historicity when the file is run several times: seems to remember the last location when there is some code run that changes the directory, rather than starting afresh.

[jjallaire]

Thanks for reporting this! Should be fixed here: a540075

[shaenzi]

Hi,
thanks for your quick reply and suggested fix! However, even after upgrading to the latest version (0.9.305, which should include your fix), the behaviour is still inconsistent on my side. I can set

project:
  execute-dir: file

and land in the main folder if I happened to be there in the previous run from some code that changes directories, and I can be in the subfolder when I set it like this:

project:
  execute-dir: project

The way I check in python where I am in a code cell is like this:

import os
print(os.getcwd())

Any ideas? suggestions of what I should try?
thanks!

[jjallaire]

I'm not able to reproduce this (the directory is correctly set and reset for new renders). Here's the test project I am using: https://github.com/jjallaire/execute-dir

When you updated it's possible that you were still running the old version when you tested. Could you make 100% sure you are running the latest version? If that doesn't work LMK what platform you are running on as it's possible (but not very likely) that there is a platform difference in play (I'm on OS X)

[shaenzi]

I'm on Windows. updated to latest version (0.9.342) and behaviour is still inconsistent. Will use a workaround for now and test on another windows machine later.

[jjallaire]

Interesting -- I still think you may not be running the right version as I tried on Windows and found that the revised implementation actually results in a runtime error (because windows paths with "" are not properly escaped). So on Windows I'd expect that you would see this error rather than the no-op you seem to be using.

The error with the bashslash escaping is fixed here: d64661d