Warn user when latex is running its (very) long setup steps

[sghng]

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

When rendering a Quarto file to PDF, the rendering is stuck at "running lualatex", no error msg or output were given. Switching to other engines such as pdflatex and xelatex fixes this. This problem persists after switching to Tex distribution other than built in tinytex.

Steps to reproduce

A basic qmd file can reproduce this:

Some content

Then run quarto render file.qmd --to pdf.

Actual behavior

The rendering is stuck at "running lualatex".

  quarto render clean_test.qmd  --to pdf -o clean.pdf --verbose
pandoc -o clean_test.tex --verbose
  to: latex
  standalone: true
  pdf-engine: lualatex
  variables:
    graphics: true
    tables: true
  default-image-extension: pdf

metadata
  documentclass: scrartcl
  classoption:
    - DIV=11
    - numbers=noendperiod
  papersize: letter
  header-includes:
    - \KOMAoption{captions}{tableheading}
  block-headings: true

[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/template.patched from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/template.patched
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/passoptions.latex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/passoptions.latex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/doc-class.tex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/doc-class.tex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/fonts.latex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/fonts.latex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/font-settings.latex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/font-settings.latex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/common.latex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/common.latex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/pandoc.tex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/pandoc.tex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/tables.tex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/tables.tex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/graphics.tex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/graphics.tex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/citations.tex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/citations.tex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/babel-lang.tex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/babel-lang.tex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/tightlist.tex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/tightlist.tex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/biblio-config.tex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/biblio-config.tex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/after-header-includes.latex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/after-header-includes.latex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/hypersetup.latex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/hypersetup.latex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/before-title.tex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/before-title.tex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/title.tex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/title.tex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/before-body.tex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/before-body.tex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/toc.tex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/toc.tex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/before-bib.tex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/before-bib.tex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/biblio.tex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/biblio.tex
[INFO] Loaded /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/after-body.tex from /var/folders/yz/bptz74295sb69lwznx99tw340000gn/T/quarto-sessione88ce86d23396cac/94420901d46b2665/68fb0f8e15a55d37/after-body.tex
[INFO] Running filter /Applications/quarto/share/filters/main.lua
[INFO] Completed filter /Applications/quarto/share/filters/main.lua in 25 ms

Rendering PDF
running lualatex - 1

Expected behavior

The rendering should proceed correctly.

Your environment

• Quarto: 1.8.25
• OS: macOS Tahoe
• TinyTex v2025.10, installed via Quarto

Quarto check output

Quarto 1.8.25
[✓] Checking environment information...
      Quarto cache location: /Users/sghuang/Library/Caches/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: /Applications/quarto/bin

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

[✓] Checking LaTeX....................OK
      Using: Installation From Path
      Path: /opt/homebrew/bin
      Version: undefined

[✓] Checking Chrome Headless....................OK
      Using: Chrome found on system
      Path: /Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome
      Source: MacOS known location

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

[✓] Checking Python 3 installation....OK
      Version: 3.13.7 (Conda)
      Path: /Users/sghuang/mamba/envs/ds/bin/python
      Jupyter: 5.8.1
      Kernels: python3, ds

(-) Checking Jupyter engine render....

Extra data: line 2 column 1 (char 209843)
(-) Checking Jupyter engine render....WARN: Error encountered when rendering files
[✓] Checking Jupyter engine render....OK

[cscheid]

If it's the first time you're running lualatex, the font cache code might take on the order of ~10 minutes (it's aggravating, I know, but it's not something we can do anything about.) How long have you let it be?

[sghng]

I just let it run for half an hour and still stuck, and for context it's running on a MacBook with M3 Pro... I'll let it run over night and see what happens.

[cderv]

Usually, what helps debug this kind of thing for me is keep-tex: true to get the tex file and try to render it directly without Quarto calling lualatex.

Also to have more debug information, run with --log-level debug or using env var
https://quarto.org/docs/troubleshooting/#verbose-mode

This can give us some hints on where the rendering is at, but possibly this is inside LaTeX processing. You should have a .log file already created by tlmgr with some informations.

Thanks !

[sghng]

This somehow works now, here's what happened:

• I let it run for roughly an hour.
• Then an error from tex distribution will occur, complaining some packages are missing.
• After that, if I render again, it just works.

Unfortunately I have cleaned the terminal output accidentally so I forgot know what the error messages exactly are...

I can leave this issue open if it's worth some further investigation.

[cscheid]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's just the initial setup from TeX distributions.

Ideally Quarto would be able to detect that this is happening and would warn you appropriately, but I don't think there's anything we can do to make this faster.

[cderv]

But I don't think there's anything we can do to make this faster.

Providing quarto install tinytex as a specific version to use with Quarto is our way to make this faster. This is because the bundle we install is packaging a bunch of CTAN packages, including the default one you need for a very basic document.

I can see in a clean install how long it can be if there is nothing installed yet! Especially because quarto will do trial and error by looking at log message for each missing package. That can be long !

Ideally Quarto would be able to detect that this is happening and would warn you appropriately,

Do you have idea on how to do that ?
I am thinking we could try check the currently installed list of packages and if this is very small then show a warning that this will be very long, and way to speed up is using TinyTeX or install the list of package (with url to that list). 🤔

[sghng]

But I don't think there's anything we can do to make this faster.

Providing quarto install tinytex as a specific version to use with Quarto is our way to make this faster. This is because the bundle we install is packaging a bunch of CTAN packages, including the default one you need for a very basic document.

I encountered very slow first rendering even with Quarto bundled tinytex. Besides I'm not sure why this is going to be faster, isn't TexLive supposed to be a more complete distribution than TinyTex?

[cderv]

isn't TexLive supposed to be a more complete distribution

It depends if you install TeX Live included all CTAN packages in one install. For sure in this case, you'll get everything at once.

I was assuming an install of TeX Live without only the bare minimum. Which may not be the common case - sorry.

TinyTeX is a lightweight but offers some bundled with various number of packages pre-installed. One of the bundle is the full install too.

I encountered very slow first rendering even with Quarto bundled tinytex.

This would be interesting to understand what is happening. I can see slow rendering if you're missing some packages because of Quarto PDF engine (https://quarto.org/docs/output-formats/pdf-engine.html#quarto-pdf-engine) that will try to parse error and detect missing package to install, then retry.

Otherwise, it could be some other reason that makes LaTeX rendering slow on your environment but we need to find why. You could try keep-md: true to get the .tex file, and then call LaTeX rendering directly on it, without Quarto and see if this is faster.