Is it possible to group output files by format?

[lucaspar]

Description

I have several output files generated and it's getting difficult to navigate. I'm looking for a config/solution to group outputs by format as follows:

  docs.qmd
  outputs
 ├─  html
 │  ├─  docs.html
 │  └─  img
 │     └─  sample.png
 └─  gfm
    └─  docs.md

Right now the html and gfm dirs do not exist and all different formats are mixed in outputs/, which is not ideal. The project is configured as:

project:
    type: website
    output-dir: "outputs"
    execute-dir: "file"

[mcanouil]

Make a post-render script that organise your files.
https://quarto.org/docs/projects/scripts.html#pre-and-post-render

[lucaspar]

Thanks for the reply.

It seems that moving files in a post script causes other issues when trying to serve them.

# from docs/
quarto preview --port 4444 --no-browser --render all

outputs:

# ...
[13/13] templates/example.md

./post-render.sh
        2024-08-26T15:31:57-0400 Checking preconditions...
        2024-08-26T15:31:57-0400 Moving files...

ERROR: NotFound: No such file or directory (os error 2): readfile '/home/user/quarto/docs/outputs/templates/example.html'
Path: /home/user/quarto/docs/outputs/templates/example.html

Stack trace:
Path: /home/user/quarto/docs/outputs/templates/example.html
    at readTextFileSync (ext:deno_fs/30_fs.js:859:10)
    at Object.Deno.readTextFileSync (file:///opt/quarto/bin/quarto.js:5047:25)
    at ServeRenderManager.fileRenderHash (file:///opt/quarto/bin/quarto.js:100012:33)
    at file:///opt/quarto/bin/quarto.js:99990:46
    at Array.forEach (<anonymous>)
    at ServeRenderManager.onRenderResult (file:///opt/quarto/bin/quarto.js:99987:23)
    at serveProject (file:///opt/quarto/bin/quarto.js:100139:19)
    at eventLoopTick (ext:core/01_core.js:153:7)
    at async Command.actionHandler (file:///opt/quarto/bin/quarto.js:100815:9)
    at async Command.execute (file:///opt/quarto/bin/quarto.js:8017:13)

I also don't know how I could serve files from a different directory (outputs/html in this case).

[mcanouil]

quarto preview is not to "serve" the files.
You can use Quarto profiles and when you are happy with the preview, do a quarto render with a profile using a post render script.

[cscheid]

Another solution could be to use different project profiles with different output-dir and different render lists (or formats, as appropriate), so that each profile sends a part of your project to a different directory.

[lucaspar]

Can you show an example of how that's done since _quarto.yml takes a single project entry? Does output-dir accept a list of directories?

[cscheid]

I'm not sure what you mean. You have a project: key in your _quarto.yml, and then other project: keys in your project profile YAML. Quarto should then merge those objects whenever the different profiles are active. See the documentation.