object 'is_abs_path' not found

[mquinson]

Hello,

when I run Rscript -e "bookdown::render_book('index.Rmd', 'bookdown::gitbook')", I get the following error message:

output file: bookdown-demo.knit.md

/usr/bin/pandoc +RTS -K512m -RTS bookdown-demo.utf8.md --to html4 --from markdown+autolink_bare_uris+tex_math_single_backslash --output bookdown-demo.html --lua-filter /usr/lib/R/site-library/bookdown/rmarkdown/lua/custom-environment.lua --lua-filter /usr/lib/R/site-library/rmarkdown/rmarkdown/lua/pagebreak.lua --lua-filter /usr/lib/R/site-library/rmarkdown/rmarkdown/lua/latex-div.lua --metadata-file /tmp/RtmpeK0v3x/filedc634e3f7795 --wrap preserve --standalone --section-divs --table-of-contents --toc-depth 3 --template /usr/lib/R/site-library/bookdown/templates/gitbook.html --highlight-style pygments --number-sections --css style.css --include-in-header /tmp/RtmpeK0v3x/rmarkdown-strdc63614fa11d.html --mathjax --filter /usr/bin/pandoc-citeproc 
Error in move_files_html(output, lib_dir) : 
  object 'is_abs_path' not found
Calls: <Anonymous> ... render_cur_session -> <Anonymous> -> <Anonymous> -> move_files_html
Execution halted

I tried to google a bit on this error message, but failed to find any hint.

My system is a Debian testing and I installed the relevant packages from the Debian repositories. I can give you more details if needed, but so far I'm not even sure of what information could help you. Sorry about that.

[cderv]

I installed the relevant packages from the Debian repositories.

Which versions of packages are you using ? Can you update ?

If you update to last CRAN version of knitr and bookdown, it should be ok. This was an issue between package updates last year but shouldn't be an issue anymore.

You are probably using a recent knitr with an older bookdown 🤔

Related issue: yihui/knitr#2042

[mquinson]

Here are the versions that I'm using. Feel free to close the bug if it's the reason: I'll reopen it against the Debian packages in this case.

ii  r-cran-bookdown 0.21+dfsg-1  all          authoring books and technical documents with GNU R markdown
ii  r-cran-knitr    1.37+dfsg-1  all          GNU R package for dynamic report generation using Literate Programming

[yihui]

Yes, that's the reason: your bookdown is way too old (from 2020), but knitr is relatively new. Personally I don't really recommend installing R packages from Debian repositories because you don't have control over when they can be updated. Especially for packages that do not require compilation, I'd just use install.packages() in R to install them. That way, you can easily update them via update.packages() at any time.

[mquinson]

For the record, I reported this bug against Debian here: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=991566

[yihui]

Thank you!