Quarto does not find chromium on Arch Linux, even though it is installed

[astoeriko]

Bug description

I am trying to render a Quarto document that includes a Mermaid diagram. I get this error message:

ERROR: Chrome not found

No Chrome or Chromium installation was detected.

Please run 'quarto tools install chromium' to install Chromium.

However, I have Chromium installed through the Archlinux package manager pacman. chromium --version gives me Chromium 110.0.5481.177 Arch Linux, and I can also open the browser.

I suppose the problem is that the command is called chromium on my system, whereas Quarto expects it to be named chromium-browser.

I am running Quarto version 1.2.313.

Checklist

• Please include a minimal, fully reproducible example in a single .qmd file? Please provide the whole file rather than the snippet you believe is causing the issue.
• Please format your issue so it is easier for us to read the bug report.
• Please document the RStudio IDE version you're running (if applicable), by providing the value displayed in the "About RStudio" main menu dialog?
• Please document the operating system you're running. If on Linux, please provide the specific distribution.

[cscheid]

Unfortunately, we can't guess the name of chromium in every possible OS. Note that chromium, for example, does exist in other Linux distros and is not to be chosen over chromium-browser. See eg https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=281697

We could attempt to resolve chromium after chromium-browser, but I'm not sure it's a net positive:

• If we resolve chromium after chromium-browser, then a user who installed chromium by accident would now experience a bug, exactly for the reasons described in the Rpi forum post above
• It seems like you can still quarto tools install chromium and that would still work
• You could set up like this:

  mkdir -p ~/.local/bin # also ensure this is in your PATH
  ln -s `which chromium` $HOME/.local/bin/chromium-browser
  

If we were to resolve this properly, I think it should be with distribution-specific configurations that target chromium under Arch, and only under Arch. This would require a bigger architectural change, and be another situation where I don't know if the extra complication is worth the risk.

[astoeriko]

Thanks for having a look. I understand that it is difficult to account for differences in all the distributions.

I hesitate to use quarto tools install chromium because I do not really want Quarto to install software on its own, but linking to the existing executable sounds like a good option.
Maybe it would be best if distribution-specific packages do this “customization” step? (There is no official quarto package for Arch Linux, but there is a user-provided package in the Arch Linux user repository – that is how I installed Quarto.)

It could also be helpful to add a remark in this section of the Quarto documentation that Quarto expects chromium-browser and that it might be necessary to link that to chromium.

[cscheid]

Maybe it would be best if distribution-specific packages do this “customization” step? (There is no official quarto package for Arch Linux, but there is a user-provided package in the Arch Linux user repository – that is how I installed Quarto.)

That seems like a good idea, except that we're not the ones building quarto packages for Arch.

[astoeriko]

except that we're not the ones building quarto packages for Arch

Sure, I know. I will see if I can suggest a change in the packaging instruction to the respective maintainer.

Feel free to close this issue, as there does not seem to be a lot that can be done about it on the Quarto side (other than better explaining the problem and how to solve it).

[cscheid]

Thanks! I'll keep it open to track this general kind of issue in the future.

[cderv]

Unfortunately, we can't guess the name of chromium in every possible OS.

@cscheid just to share experience of our other R tools that are working with chrome

• pagedown::find_chrome() will look for chrome for each OS, on Linux checking for c('google-chrome', 'chromium-browser', 'chromium', 'google-chrome-stable') and using first found. Setting env var PAGEDOWN_CHROME allow to specific a specific one to use
• chromote::find_chrome() will so similarly, looking for google-chrome, chromium-browser and chromium , or using CHROMOTE_CHROME if set.

I think this cover all usage encountered with those tools.

do you think we could offer a configuration through an environment variable so that user can configure the chrome binary to use with Quarto ?

But if we can do same detection logic that would be great - we do some detection for R already to find where it is on Windows for example.

Anyway, sharing for reference and inspiration for when we can tackle this.

[cderv]

For future reference, related issue where chromium is not found but an env var could help configure what to use #2980

[cderv]

I have opened an macro issue to track a proper solution

• Offer a way to configure which chromium to use for feature that rely on it (diagram snapshot) #10170

[arinbasu]

@cscheid , I have Vivaldi installed on OpenSuse, but quarto cannot find it either, and linking Vivaldi to chromium-browser does not help either.

[mcanouil]

@arinbasu Could you give the default path where it is located? As is your comment is not really useful unfortunately.