Pkgdown: `build_site()` fails with pandoc 2 update

[mjsteinbaugh]

I updated pandoc with homebrew last night and am now getting an error when running build_site(). This looks to be related to the --smart flag in the rmarkdown::pandoc_convert() call in util.R.

Here's the error message:

--smart/-S has been removed.  Use +smart or -smart extension instead.
For example: pandoc -f markdown+smart -t markdown-smart.
Try pandoc --help for more information.
Error: pandoc document conversion failed with error 2

@yihui seems to have run into this with bookdown recently as well:
https://github.com/rstudio/rmarkdown/issues/1120

[hadley]

Fix is documented in that issue

[yihui]

The problem is you used --smart in your code:
https://github.com/hadley/pkgdown/blob/2794e6247c8e4777550f12e329986c503688c6e3/R/util.r#L32-L43

I only fixed the issue in rmarkdown. You have to check rmarkdown::pandoc_available("2.0") and decide whether to use --smart or the +smart extension.

[hadley]

Oh got it.

[nacnudus]

There seems to be something else going on as well. I patched pkgdown to use +smart, but then running pkgdown::build_site() got

> pkgdown::build_news()
Building news -----------------------------------------------------------------
pandoc: +smart: openBinaryFile: does not exist (No such file or directory)
Error: pandoc document conversion failed with error 1

This is reproducible by creating a new package with CRAN devtools, and GitHub pkgdown.

> devtools::create("temp")
Creating package 'temp' in '/home/nacnudus/R'
No DESCRIPTION found. Creating with values:


Package: temp
Title: What the Package Does (one line, title case)
Version: 0.0.0.9000
Authors@R: person("Duncan", "Garmonsway", email = "[email protected]", role = c("aut", "cre"))
Description: What the package does (one paragraph).
Depends: R (>= 3.4.2)
License: What license is it under?
Encoding: UTF-8
LazyData: true
* Creating `temp.Rproj` from template.
* Adding `.Rproj.user`, `.Rhistory`, `.RData` to ./.gitignore
> setwd("temp")
> devtools::use_news_md()
* Creating `NEWS.md` from template.
* Modify `NEWS.md`.
> pkgdown::build_site()
Initialising site -------------------------------------------------------------
Creating 'docs/'
✔ Adding '^docs$' to '.Rbuildignore'
Copying '/home/nacnudus/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/pkgdown/assets/jquery.sticky-kit.min.js'
Copying '/home/nacnudus/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/pkgdown/assets/link.svg'
Copying '/home/nacnudus/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/pkgdown/assets/pkgdown.css'
Copying '/home/nacnudus/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/pkgdown/assets/pkgdown.js'
Building home -----------------------------------------------------------------
Writing '/home/nacnudus/R/temp/docs/authors.html'
Writing '/home/nacnudus/R/temp/docs/index.html'
Building function reference ---------------------------------------------------
Creating 'docs/reference/'
Loading temp
Writing '/home/nacnudus/R/temp/docs/reference/index.html'
Building news -----------------------------------------------------------------
Creating 'docs/news/'
pandoc: +smart: openBinaryFile: does not exist (No such file or directory)
Error: pandoc document conversion failed with error 1

[mjsteinbaugh]

For the time being, I'm simply using the version of pandoc bundled with RStudio. Set PATH in ~/.Renviron and add /Applications/RStudio.app/Contents/MacOS/pandoc.

[pat-s]

For the time being, I'm simply using the version of pandoc bundled with RStudio. Set PATH in ~/.Renviron and add /Applications/RStudio.app/Contents/MacOS/pandoc.

Or simply do brew remove pandoc and RStudio will automatically use its own version of pandoc.

[nacnudus]

Workaround on Linux.

1. Obtain the pandoc binaries
   
   
   
   1. Download the last pandoc v.1.19 amd64 .deb
   
   
   2. Extract the .deb into the current directory with ar vx pandoc-1.19.2.1-1-amd64.deb.
   
   
   3. Extract ./data.tar.gz into the current directory with tar zxpf data.tar.gz.
   
   
   4. Copy the pandoc and pandoc-citeproc binaries from ./usr/bin to somewhere else, e.g. ~/pandoc.
   
   
2. Add the location of the pandoc binaries to the beginning of the R path in your .Rprofile with add_path("/path/to/pandoc/binaries", after = 0).