How to use variable in global environment to render pdf in quarto

[joedoehl]

Description

I am writing a report containing very data heavy analyses. Thus, when I want to render the pdf in quarto, I do not want to have to execute all code chunks every time, otherwise, it will take a day to render the document. Rmarkdown can use variables stored in the global environment, eliminating the need to execute the analysis code chunks every time I want to render the pdf to check that the format is alright. How can I get quarto to do the same? It seems quarto is set up to always initiate a new session in which it renders the document, which means, it cannot pull the variables stored in the global environment, which is quite a nuisance. Are there any workarounds for quarto?

[mcanouil]

I am not sure to understand what you are talking about, i.e., the "global environment" thing.

If you were loading data into R then relying on the fact that rmarkdown is an R package to read what's in your session, then it is not possible in Quarto.
"rmarkdown runs in R" which is very different from "Quarto runs R".
Note that the way you are/were using rmarkdown is more of a side effect and in some aspect it is not considered a good practice.

This being said, you can cache/freeze results: https://quarto.org/docs/projects/code-execution.html#cache

You can also use R packages targets to efficiently manage your workflow and cache, then read from the cache to compute any report.