Quarto failed to remove directory

[emil-hagglund]

I have:

• searched the issue tracker for similar issues
• installed the latest version of Quarto CLI
• formatted my issue following the Bug Reports guide

Bug description

Quarto refusing to remove directory when it uses both long path and short path format in Windows 11.
Error message

ERROR: Refusing to remove directory C:/Users/emil.hagglund/AppData/Local/Temp/Rtmpw3MI6F/long-report-output-folder/long-report-output-folder_files that isn't a subdirectory of C:\Users\EMIL~1.HAG\AppData\Local\Temp\Rtmpw3MI6F\long-report-output-folder

Stack trace:
    at safeRemoveDirSync (file:///C:/Users/emil.hagglund/AppData/Local/Programs/Quarto/bin/quarto.js:2540:11)
    at file:///C:/Users/emil.hagglund/AppData/Local/Programs/Quarto/bin/quarto.js:114464:9
    at Array.forEach (<anonymous>)
    at renderCleanup (file:///C:/Users/emil.hagglund/AppData/Local/Programs/Quarto/bin/quarto.js:114462:23)
    at file:///C:/Users/emil.hagglund/AppData/Local/Programs/Quarto/bin/quarto.js:115404:44
    at withTiming (file:///C:/Users/emil.hagglund/AppData/Local/Programs/Quarto/bin/quarto.js:18977:21)
    at Object.complete (file:///C:/Users/emil.hagglund/AppData/Local/Programs/Quarto/bin/quarto.js:115404:9)
    at eventLoopTick (ext:core/01_core.js:178:7)
    at async Object.onPostProcess (file:///C:/Users/emil.hagglund/AppData/Local/Programs/Quarto/bin/quarto.js:123981:28) 
    at async renderFileInternal (file:///C:/Users/emil.hagglund/AppData/Local/Programs/Quarto/bin/quarto.js:123965:3) 

Steps to reproduce

No response

Actual behavior

No response

Expected behavior

No response

Your environment

• OS: Windows 11

Quarto check output

Quarto 1.8.25
[>] Checking environment information...
      Quarto cache location: C:\Users\emil.hagglund\AppData\Local\quarto
[>] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
      Pandoc version 3.6.3: OK
      Dart Sass version 1.87.0: OK
      Deno version 2.3.1: OK
      Typst version 0.13.0: OK
[>] Checking versions of quarto dependencies......OK
[>] Checking Quarto installation......OK
      Version: 1.8.25
      Path: C:\Users\emil.hagglund\AppData\Local\Programs\Quarto\bin    
      CodePage: 1252

[>] Checking tools....................OK
      TinyTeX: (external install)
      Chromium: (not installed)

[>] Checking LaTeX....................OK
      Using: TinyTex
      Path: C:\Users\emil.hagglund\AppData\Roaming\TinyTeX\bin\windows\ 
      Version: 2025

[>] Checking Chrome Headless....................OK
      Using: Chrome found on system
      Path: C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe       
      Source: Windows Registry

[>] Checking basic markdown render....OK

[>] Checking Python 3 installation....(None)

      Unable to locate an installed version of Python 3.
      Install Python 3 from https://www.python.org/downloads/

[>] Checking R installation...........OK
      Version: 4.4.0
      Path: C:/Users/emil.hagglund/AppData/Local/Programs/R/R-4.4.0     
      LibPaths:
        - C:/Users/emil.hagglund/AppData/Local/R/win-library/4.4        
        - C:/Users/emil.hagglund/AppData/Local/Programs/R/R-4.4.0/library
      knitr: 1.50
      rmarkdown: 2.30

[>] Checking Knitr engine render......OK

[cderv]

Can you share more about your setup and example ?

Looking at path C:/Users/emil.hagglund/AppData/Local/Temp/Rtmpw3MI6F/long-report-output-folder/long-report-output-folder_files I am guessing you are using quarto from R as the project is in the R temp directory ?

Is this with quarto R package ? or with pkgdown ? Or is this from using in Positron ?

Can you share context and steps so that I can reproduce to fix ?

Thank you

[emil-hagglund]

Unfortunately I cannot share detailed example and I'm not able to reproduce use a minimal example. But you're correct that I call quarto using the quarto_render function in R from VS Code. I use plotly inside the quarto document to generate figures and have the parameter embed-resources set to true.

quarto::quarto_render(
  input = qmd_file,
  execute_dir = file.path(tempdir(), "long-report-folder-name") 
)

[cderv]

Thanks - I'll try something with that information.

[KevCaz]

@emil-hagglund @cderv

FWIW I recently stumbled into the exact same stack trace calling the quarto R package from a Shiny app to render a report.
The problem was MacOS-specific in that case, and it was a mismatch between /var and /private/var. The problem was solved by replacing

tmpdir <- tempdir()

with

tmpdir <- tempdir() |> fs::path_real()

Apparently this fixes the /var vs /private/var tempdir mismatches on macOS that apparently breaks Quarto cleanup.

Sorry I cannot be more specific here, I am not on macOS and I did not investigate further. I just thought I should share this here as I read through this issue before fixing mine.