Easy / fast tools path retrieval

[skwde]

Description

when I do

quarto install chrome-headless-shell

chrome-headless-shell is installed to some quarto specific path.

chrome-headless-shell is also needed by other tools e.g. via puppeteer by decktape (to export html slides).

Instead of having puppeteer download new browser I can instruct it to use the already existing chrome-headless-shell via

PUPPETEER_SKIP_DOWNLOAD="true"
PUPPETEER_EXECUTABLE_PATH="$HOME/.local/share/quarto/chrome-headless-shell/chrome-headless-shell-linux64/chrome-headless-shell"

Where I got the path via quarto check.

I don't want to hardcode the path and extracting it from quarto check is possible but ugly and takes quite a while.

So is there an easier way to do this?
If not, I think it is a valid improvement.

Note, in the past I also hardcoded the path to tinytex bin which is also ugly and could be improved via a general tools path output.

[mcanouil]

quarto check can give you this as JSON instead of text, which avoids both the hardcoding and the scraping. Use the install target to keep it quick, and --output to write a file:

quarto check install --output check.json
PUPPETEER_EXECUTABLE_PATH="$(jq -r .chrome.path check.json)"

chrome.path is the resolved executable, not the install root, and the same file carries latex.path for the TinyTeX bin folder you mentioned. Here that run takes about 4 seconds.

For Decktape there is a neater option: invert the dependency. Quarto resolves Chrome in a fixed order, and QUARTO_CHROMIUM wins over the copy Quarto installed. So let Puppeteer manage the browser as it normally would, then point Quarto at that binary:

export QUARTO_CHROMIUM="/path/to/puppeteer/managed/chrome-headless-shell"

No path query is needed at all, and only one browser gets downloaded.

[cderv]

It is currently hidden from CLI help but we have a quarto tools info command.

And you can do

❯ quarto tools info chrome-headless-shell | jq '.directory'
"C:\\Users\\chris\\AppData\\Local\\quarto\\chrome-headless-shell"

This is probably going to change though... quarto tools info was something we were thinking of changing.
However, I am considering adding support for --json output more broadly so that quarto tools list can output JSON too. Maybe that would be the replacement. 🤔 You can follow #1393

We have the path info we should expose it.

Though for the use case, I agree that I would go with QUARTO_CHROMIUM if you want all your tool to use one single chromium you can manage without Quarto.

[skwde]

Thanks for you inputs / feedback.

I prefer the quarto tools info simply because it is faster (even though it might be deprecated).

I agree that inverting the chrome dep would be better, though I had moderate pain to get decktape working in the past which lead to me installing chrome (and now chrome-headless-shell) by "hand".

Currently I think that the quarto based install + missing apt dependencies is the cleanest approach.

[skwde]

@cderv one thing I just noticed in the output:

$ quarto tools info chrome-headless-shell
{
  "name": "Chrome Headless Shell",
  "installed": true,
  "version": "153.0.8010.47",
  "directory": "/home/stefan/.local/share/quarto/chrome-headless-shell"
}

$ quarto tools info tinytex
{
  "name": "TinyTeX",
  "installed": true,
  "version": "v2026.09",
  "directory": "/home/stefan/.TinyTeX",
  "bin-directory": "/home/stefan/.TinyTeX/bin/x86_64-linux",
  "configuration": {
    "status": "ok"
  }
}

It is not consistent, having the bin-directory for chrome-headless-shell would certainly be nice as well.

[cderv]

Agreed, it is not yet consistent. Hence #1393

We need to find a way to print all relevant information in a good way.