Quarto

This page covers the requirements and internals of deploying Quarto content to ricochet.

Project requirements

Quarto content items share the same dependency requirements as their underlying language runtime. Refer to the relevant language page for details:

Language	Required files	Reference
R	renv.lock	R deployment
Julia	Manifest.toml	Julia deployment
Python	.python-version, uv.lock	Python deployment

Example _ricochet.toml

[content]
name = "My Quarto Site"
entrypoint = "_quarto.yml"
access_type = "external"
content_type = "quarto-r"

[language]
name = "r"
packages = "renv.lock"

[static]
index = "index.html"
output_dir = "_docs"

Supported content types

Quarto content items can be deployed as apps or tasks.

Apps

Content Type	Language	Description
quarto-r-shiny	R	A Quarto document using a Shiny runtime.

Tasks

Content Type	Language	Description
quarto-r	R	A Quarto document rendered using an R runtime.
quarto-jl	Julia	A Quarto document rendered using a Julia runtime.
quarto-py	Python	A Quarto document rendered using a Python runtime.

Serving rendered output as a static site

Quarto content items do not automatically serve their rendered output. To expose the rendered HTML, add a [static] section to your _ricochet.toml:

[static]
index = "index.html"
output_dir = "_docs"

The site will be available at /static/{item-id}. See the Static Sites page for full configuration details.

How ricochet runs Quarto content

Quarto discovery

Ricochet locates the Quarto binary on the host in the following order:

1. PATH — if quarto is found on the system PATH, it is used directly.
2. /opt/quarto — checked as a standard installation location.
3. /opt/quarto-{version} — broader search under /opt/ for versioned Quarto installations.

Caution

Ricochet does not support pinning Quarto versions per content item or running multiple Quarto versions simultaneously. Quarto version pinning is on the roadmap.

Quarto sites and project entrypoints

When the entrypoint is _quarto.yml, ricochet renders the parent directory rather than the file itself. This supports Quarto projects such as websites and books.

Running quarto-r

Ricochet runs:

quarto render <entrypoint>

The QUARTO_R environment variable is set to the R binary discovered via R version discovery.

Running quarto-r-shiny

Ricochet runs:

quarto serve <entrypoint>

The QUARTO_R environment variable is set to the R binary discovered via R version discovery.

Running quarto-jl

Ricochet runs:

quarto render <entrypoint>

The QUARTO_JULIA environment variable is set to the Julia binary discovered via Julia version discovery.

Running quarto-py

Ricochet runs:

quarto render <entrypoint>

Python version matching follows the same rules as other Python content, using .python-version and the environment restored by uv sync. See Python deployment for details on version discovery and environment restoration.

Ricochet points Quarto at the restored virtual environment by setting the following environment variables:

Variable	Value
QUARTO_PYTHON	Path to the virtual env Python binary (<bundle>/.venv/bin/python)
VIRTUAL_ENV	Path to the virtual environment directory
UV_PYTHON	Path to the matched system Python binary
PYTHONUNBUFFERED	1

The virtual environment’s bin/ directory is also prepended to PATH.