RStudio cannot find pandoc on Windows remote desktop

[pprevos]

We moved to Windows Remote Desktop and RMarkdown now throws an error as it cannot seem to fine the Pandoc executable.

I raised this on RStudio Community some days ago.

When knitting, RMarkdown calls C:/Program Files/RStudio/bin/pandoc/pandoc, but I get this error: pandoc.exe: \\: openBinaryFile: does not exist (No such file or directory)

The system variable RSTUDIO_PANDOC is set to C:/Program Files/RStudio/bin/pandoc.

Using Powershell, I do see the two executable files in that folder.

To make matters wordse, when I run remotes::install_github('rstudio/rmarkdown'), the system breaks (htmltools is not installable). I installed the standard version (see below).

Session info:

R version 4.0.0 (2020-04-24)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows Server x64 (build 14393), RStudio 1.2.5019

Locale:
  LC_COLLATE=English_Australia.1252  LC_CTYPE=English_Australia.1252   
  LC_MONETARY=English_Australia.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C                      
  LC_TIME=English_Australia.1252    

Package version:
  base64enc_0.1.3 digest_0.6.25   evaluate_0.14   glue_1.4.1      graphics_4.0.0 
  grDevices_4.0.0 highr_0.8       htmltools_0.5.0 jsonlite_1.7.0  knitr_1.29     
  magrittr_1.5    markdown_1.1    methods_4.0.0   mime_0.9        rlang_0.4.6    
  rmarkdown_2.3   stats_4.0.0     stringi_1.4.6   stringr_1.4.0   tinytex_0.24   
  tools_4.0.0     utils_4.0.0     xfun_0.15       yaml_2.2.1     

Pandoc version: 2.7.2

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[cderv]

I think this is related to #1268 about UNC path and pandoc not dealing well with it.

From Community, we see the command contains paths beggining with \\ like -template "\\file01\apps\RLibrary\rmarkdown\rmd\h\default.html":

output file: test.knit.md

"C:/Program Files/RStudio/bin/pandoc/pandoc" +RTS -K512m -RTS test.utf8.md --to html4 --from markdown+autolink_bare_uris+tex_math_single_backslash --output test.html --email-obfuscation none --self-contained --standalone --section-divs --template "\\file01\apps\RLibrary\rmarkdown\rmd\h\default.html" --no-highlight --variable highlightjs=1 --variable "theme:bootstrap" --include-in-header "C:\Users\PeterP\AppData\Local\Temp\RtmpkVdgnd\rmarkdown-str251b8458b147.html" --mathjax --variable "mathjax-url:https://mathjax.rstudio.com/latest/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS-MML_HTMLorMML" --lua-filter "\\file01/apps/RLibrary/rmarkdown/rmd/lua/pagebreak.lua" --lua-filter "\\file01/apps/RLibrary/rmarkdown/rmd/lua/latex-div.lua" 
pandoc.exe: \\: openBinaryFile: does not exist (No such file or directory)
Error: pandoc document conversion failed with error 1
Execution halted

[pprevos]

Hi, I tried to change the .libPaths() to a mapped drive, e.g. "N:/folder-name" and RMArkdown now works. However, I get errors from other packages.

[cderv]

I still believe this is related to #1268 and we'll keep that one open. I close this is to no duplicate tracking.

Thanks for the report.

As an update note, this is a very hard issue for use to solve. It is probably something caused also by Pandoc and not easy to debug.

[cderv]

Duplicate of #1268

[github-actions]

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