"ERROR: RangeError: Invalid string length" if _quarto.yml is too large

[nickvigilante]

Bug description

In our Quarto site, we wrote a large number of pages and included those pages in our sidebar. After some time, we noticed an error if we included too many pages in the sidebar:

ERROR: RangeError: Invalid string length

Stack trace:
    at JSON.stringify (<anonymous>)
    at buildJsYamlAnnotation (file:///Applications/quarto/bin/quarto.js:18213:10)
    at readAnnotatedYamlFromMappedString (file:///Applications/quarto/bin/quarto.js:18096:16)
    at readAndValidateYamlFromMappedString (file:///Applications/quarto/bin/quarto.js:18454:30)
    at readAndValidateYamlFromFile (file:///Applications/quarto/bin/quarto.js:20495:50)
    at file:///Applications/quarto/bin/quarto.js:20533:36
    at Array.map (<anonymous>)
    at includedMetadata (file:///Applications/quarto/bin/quarto.js:20530:55)
    at file:///Applications/quarto/bin/quarto.js:73754:40
    at async projectContext (file:///Applications/quarto/bin/quarto.js:73546:26)

If I delete enough text from random places, remove unnecessary keys, and delete all comments, it seems to have worked around the issue for now, but I'm positive this issue will occur again, as we're regularly adding more pages to our site.

The sample app I've attached below is a 2000-page site with a matching sidebar to illustrate the behavior.

Steps to reproduce

1. Clone https://github.com/nickvigilante/invalid-string-length-issue
2. quarto preview

Expected behavior

Quarto builds the site normally.

Actual behavior

An error is thrown.

Your environment

• OS: macOS Sonoma 14.6.1

Quarto check output

Quarto 1.5.56
[✓] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
      Pandoc version 3.2.0: OK
      Dart Sass version 1.70.0: OK
      Deno version 1.41.0: OK
      Typst version 0.11.0: OK
[✓] Checking versions of quarto dependencies......OK
[✓] Checking Quarto installation......OK
      Version: 1.5.56
      Path: /Applications/quarto/bin

[✓] Checking tools....................OK
      TinyTeX: (not installed)
      Chromium: (not installed)

[✓] Checking LaTeX....................OK
      Tex:  (not detected)

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

[✓] Checking Python 3 installation....OK
      Version: 3.10.14 (Conda)
      Path: /Users/nickv/miniforge3/bin/python
      Jupyter: 5.7.2
      Kernels: ir, python3

[✓] Checking Jupyter engine render....OK

[✓] Checking R installation...........OK
      Version: 4.4.1
      Path: /opt/homebrew/Cellar/r/4.4.1/lib/R
      LibPaths:
        - /opt/homebrew/lib/R/4.4/site-library
        - /opt/homebrew/Cellar/r/4.4.1/lib/R/library
      knitr: 1.47
      rmarkdown: 2.27

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

[mcanouil]

Thanks for the report and the reproducible example.
I can reproduce with quarto render.

[cscheid]

Huh. I don't know that we'll be able to fix this, because the problem is apparently happening inside JSON.stringify, a function from Deno's standard library.

[cscheid]

It seems to be an instance of this: nodejs/node-v0.x-archive#14170

That call to stringify is not truly necessary - it's there to prevent an infinite loop that might arise from circular structures. But we really shouldn't be failing.