Visual Editor mode fails in VS Code due to unfound pandoc

[kmasiello]

Bug description

Visual Editor mode in VS Code fails with a message "Unexpected Error Loading Editor" Request pandoc_list_extensions failed with message: spawn /Users/katie/local/share/qvm/versions/v1.4.513/bin/tools/pandoc ENOENT

Rendering the document still works.

Quarto was installed via qvm. Per internal discussions, another user reported similar with Quarto installed from Mamba.

Steps to reproduce

Install Quarto via qvm.
Request Visual Editor mode in VS Code.
This may or may not be repeatable -- I'm confident I've used Visual Editor mode in VS Code previously and have always managed my Quarto versions with qvm.

Expected behavior

Visual Editor mode should work.

Actual behavior

Error message when activating Visual Mode.

Your environment

• IDE: Visual Studio Code 1.84.2
• OS: Mac Sonoma 14.1.2

Quarto check output

Quarto 1.4.513
[✓] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
      Pandoc version 3.1.9: OK
      Dart Sass version 1.69.5: OK
      Deno version 1.37.2: OK
[✓] Checking versions of quarto dependencies......OK
[✓] Checking Quarto installation......OK
      Version: 1.4.513
      Path: /Users/katie/.local/share/qvm/versions/v1.4.513/bin

[✓] Checking tools....................OK
      TinyTeX: v2023.11
      Chromium: 869685

[✓] Checking LaTeX....................OK
      Using: TinyTex
      Path: /Users/katie/Library/TinyTeX/bin/universal-darwin
      Version: 2023

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

[✓] Checking Python 3 installation....OK
      Version: 3.11.6
      Path: /opt/homebrew/opt/python@3.11/bin/python3.11
      Jupyter: 5.3.0
      Kernels: python3

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

[✓] Checking R installation...........OK
      Version: 4.2.3
      Path: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.2-arm64/Resources
      LibPaths:
        - /Users/katie/Library/R/arm64/4.2/library
        - /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.2-arm64/Resources/library
      knitr: 1.42
      rmarkdown: 2.21

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

[cscheid]

This is very weird. ENOENT usually means "no such file or directory" (no entry). But I wonder if this is a macOS multiarch thing. We're now shipping arch-specific versions of pandoc, and maybe you have a version of VS code that's arch-specific, and doesn't like spawning a subprocess of the other arch? We've had similar weird issues like this before.

Can you locate the version of VS code that you're running, go into a terminal, and then type (say)

$ file /Applications/Visual\ Studio\ Code.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron
[tell me what you get here]
$ file /Users/katie/local/share/qvm/versions/v1.4.513/bin/tools/pandoc
[tell me what you get here]

In my case (also ARM macOS), I get:

$ file /Applications/Visual\ Studio\ Code.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron
/Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures: [x86_64:Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64] [arm64:Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64]
/Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron (for architecture x86_64):	Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
/Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron (for architecture arm64):	Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64
$ file /Users/cscheid/repos/github/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/package/dist/bin/tools/pandoc
/Users/cscheid/repos/github/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/package/dist/bin/tools/pandoc: Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64

[kmasiello]

file /Applications/Visual\ Studio\ Code.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron
/Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures: [x86_64:Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64] [arm64:Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64]
/Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron (for architecture x86_64):	Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
/Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron (for architecture arm64):	Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64

and for the latter, I had to go digging around because pandoc was within a subdirectory based on architecture:

file /Users/katie/.local/share/qvm/versions/v1.4.513/bin/tools/aarch64/pandoc
/Users/katie/.local/share/qvm/versions/v1.4.513/bin/tools/aarch64/pandoc: Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64

[cscheid]

Ok, so I think what's happening is you might have an old version of the VSCode extension, and it's indeed looking for pandoc at /Users/katie/local/share/qvm/versions/v1.4.513/bin/tools/pandoc and not finding it, because our new releases put it in different places depending on architecture. What version of the extension are you running?

[kmasiello]

quarto-vscode extension v 1.109.0

[cscheid]

Now I'm entirely out of ideas :/ @dragonstyle @jjallaire, do you have any insight here?

[dragonstyle]

We've relocated pandoc into an architecture specific subfolder. Our installer creates a symlink in /bin/tools/pandoc that points to the correct architecture pandoc. I'm guessing that non-Quarto installers aren't creating this symlink.

I think the correct longer term fix is probably for the Quarto extension to look within the architecture specific subdirectory (since we won't be able to guarantee the existence of the symlink and since MacOS supports multiple architectures in a single installer).

[kmasiello]

Bingo @dragonstyle. Manually creating the symlink works. I will have to remember to update this when I install a new quarto version, but for now, Visual Editor works.
ln -s ~/.local/share/qvm/versions/v1.4.513/bin/tools/aarch64/pandoc ~/.local/share/qvm/versions/v1.4.513/bin/tools/pandoc

[clydeugene]

I am having the same issue, but in my case, the error occurs while trying to access the visual editor in an ssh session to a remote Linux cluster. I am running the project in a conda environment as that is where I installed python3.

I tried creating a symlink in the quarto directory but that did not work, so I reverted to the default settings.

I am using an M1 MacBook Air on the latest version of both VS Code and MacOS Sonoma, and the quarto plugin (on the server). Would the architecture be an issue in my case?

$ find . -type f -name "pandoc"
./quarto-1.4.506/bin/tools/x86_64/pandoc
./.conda/pkgs/pandoc-3.1.3-h32600fe_0/bin/pandoc
./.conda/envs/py39/bin/pandoc

[jjallaire]

This should be resolved here: 8e1f7ec

v1.110.0 release with this fix will be available later this week.