Quarto: Persistent problems trying to render/preview

Question

On Win 7, using R 4.1.2, RStudio 2022.07.1 Build 554, and the latest Quarto (1.0.37), I am getting persistent errors when I try to build/preview a book project [Note added: I've confirmed the problems described on two other machines, both Win 10, with the same R & Quarto versions.]

**ERROR**: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process. (os error 32), remove 'C:\Dropbox\Documents\publications\Vis-MLM\site_libs'

If it makes any difference, my project is stored in a Dropbox folder. [Note added: This problem does seem to be solved by pausing Dropbox sync as suggested by @user19749376, but that an unacceptable workflow.]

Then if I restart my session and re-build, the browser opens and I get:

Access is denied. (os error 5), stat 'C:\Dropbox\Documents\publications\Vis-MLM\index_files'

This 2nd problem is described in Unable to render quarto in R However, I do have administrative rights on my computer.

The HTML book, in _book/ is there, and I can open index.html in the browser, however it is painful to have to do this each time.

Here is quarto check

[>] Checking Quarto installation......OK
      Version: 1.0.37
      Path: C:\Program Files\Quarto\bin\
      CodePage: 1252

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

[>] Checking Python 3 installation....(None)

      Unable to locate an installed version of Python 3.
      Install Python 3 from https://www.python.org/downloads/

[>] Checking R installation...........OK
      Version: 4.1.2
      Path: C:/R/R-4.1.2
      LibPaths:
        - C:/R/R-4.1.2/library
      rmarkdown: 2.14

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

I'd be grateful for any help solving this. I'm nearly at my wits end with Quarto.

Answer 1

I'm experiencing the same error message ("ERROR: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process. (os error 32)" and am fairly certain it is caused by Dropbox accessing some of the files for syncing while quarto renders the book project and tries to remove the files again in the process as the error message does not appear anymore once I pause Dropbox syncing. Are you observing the same?

Unfortunately, at least for me, that's not really a sustainable solution as I'd like things to be synced to Dropbox but maybe it helps with finding a workaround or settings that can be changed.