New json file at `QUARTO_EXECUTE_INFO` (as per Quarto 1.8.19) not being written

[remlapmot]

Thanks for this fantastic engine.

I think the following is a QuartoNotebookRunner.jl issue - but if it's actually something the Quarto CLI should do, do correct me.

I don't whether you've seen that as of Quarto 1.8.19 (in PR https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/pull/13171) Quarto writes a json file at the location of the new environment variable QUARTO_EXECUTE_INFO.

This works for engine: knitr, and all of the jupyter: engines I've tried including jupyter: julia-1.11. However, it seems that engine: julia currently fails to write this file.

You can see this with the following simple qmd file.

---
format:
  html:
    embed-resources: true
engine: julia
---

```{julia}
println(ENV["QUARTO_EXECUTE_INFO"])

println(isfile(ENV["QUARTO_EXECUTE_INFO"]))

if isfile(ENV["QUARTO_EXECUTE_INFO"]) 
  import Pkg; Pkg.add("JSON")
  using JSON
  json_string = JSON.parsefile(ENV["QUARTO_EXECUTE_INFO"])
  JSON.print(json_string, 2)
else
  println("The file didn't exist")
end
```

which generates

Compared with say jupyter: julia-1.11 which does write the file.

---
format:
  html:
    embed-resources: true
jupyter: julia-1.11
---
  
```{julia}
println(ENV["QUARTO_EXECUTE_INFO"])

println(isfile(ENV["QUARTO_EXECUTE_INFO"]))

if isfile(ENV["QUARTO_EXECUTE_INFO"]) 
  import Pkg; Pkg.add("JSON")
  using JSON
  json_string = JSON.parsefile(ENV["QUARTO_EXECUTE_INFO"])
  JSON.print(json_string, 2)
end
```

which produces

[jkrumbiegel]

My intuition is that this is about how QuartoNotebookRunner currently handles environment variables. Check my recent comment here https://github.com/PumasAI/QuartoNotebookRunner.jl/issues/331#issuecomment-3236590910

Maybe the env variable you're reading is old because it's from when the server was starting up. So when you read it later, it's not the one that has been created for this specific run. This would be fixed with https://github.com/PumasAI/QuartoNotebookRunner.jl/pull/306

[remlapmot]

I think you are correct. Feel free to close this if you prefer. (I might try a run under your PR later.)

[MichaelHatherly]

We'll leave it open and close once #306 is merged. Thanks for the report.

[cscheid]

(just checking in here and saying hi! in case there's something you'd like us to fix for 1.8, since we're in the release candidate stage)

[MichaelHatherly]

https://github.com/PumasAI/QuartoNotebookRunner.jl/pull/306 likely can only fix this if https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/pull/12621 is merged as well from what I can tell so far since the value of QUARTO_EXECUTE_INFO appears to change on each render call as far as I can tell and the QNR Julia processes gets a "frozen" set of values on initial launch. (#306 itself is ready to go and I'll merge it shortly.)

[cscheid]

Ok, that one is too scary to merge in 1.8, but I promise to look it over early in 1.9 (work on which will begin 2-3 weeks from now).