Website sidebar auto generation renders differently on Windows vs Linux

[RalfG]

Bug description

Description

Using the sidebar auto generation feature, I get different results between Windows and Linux. I have two nested folder structures with index.qmd files along content files for each section. On Windows, the index pages are added to the sidebar as expected, while on Linux, they are omitted.

Side-by-side comparison

Version and OS info

Using Quarto v1.2.90 on

• Windows 11 Pro 21H2 build 22000.856
• Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS through WSL2
• GitHub Actions ubuntu-latest using the official quarto-setup action

Minimal, fully reproducible example

Directory structure:

.
├── _quarto.yml
├── home.qmd
└── section1
    ├── index.qmd
    ├── page1.qmd
    └── page2.qmd

_quarto.yml

project:
  type: website

website:
  sidebar:
    contents:
      - text: "Home"
        file: home.qmd
      - "---"
      - auto: section1

home.qmd

# Home
Homepage content

section1/index.qmd

# Section 1
Section 1 content

section1/page1.qmd

# Page 1
content page 1

section1/page2.qmd

# Page 2
content page 2

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.

[jjallaire]

Thanks for reporting! This is fixed here: 5a07794

Should be available in our next v1.2 pre-release (in ~ 1hr) which you'll be able to get here: https://quarto.org/docs/download/prerelease.html

For better or worse, the Linux behavior is what is intended. If you want the Windows behavior you will need to do this instead:

website:
  sidebar:
    contents:
      - text: "Home"
        file: home.qmd
      - "---"
      - section: Section 1
        contents: section1

[elgabbas]

Hello,

I think I am having the same issue using quarto 1.3.18 on windows. Has this issue already been solved @jjallaire ?

I am trying to use auto page generation to list pages using a glob. The resulting list shows the parent folders, which is not what I need. Here, I am using - auto: "section1/section1_1/page*" to list all files starting with the word 'page' in the folder 'section1/section1_1/'

The correct pages were listed, but as a tree with all parent subfolders. Is there a way to suppress this and only keep the resulting pages?

---

For example, I want to have a section called Section1, and beneath it, I want to use "section1/section1_1/index.qmd first and then automatically create pages from a subdirectory ("section1/section1_1/", without mentioning their parents): any page starting with page_C, then all pages start with page_A.

      - section: "Section1"
        contents:
          - "section1/section1_1/index.qmd"
          - auto: "section1/section1_1/page_C*.qmd"
          - auto: "section1/section1_1/page_A*.qmd"

Update: I tried to render the website using wsl ubuntu installation, and I get the same results.

Thanks, Ahmed

[jjallaire]

The feature doesn't currently handle reaching deeper into a directory structure for items (it's more geared towards reflecting the structure starting from the root). We definitely could (and probably should) enhance things to work the way you are expecting.