LaTeX Error in a specific RStudio-Quarto installation, not present in another one : "! LaTeX Error: File `biblatex-chicago.sty' not found."

[Minh-AnhHuynh]

Hello Quarto devs,

I have a bug where on my specific laptop machine, executing my .qmd file on latest R 4.4.0 and Quarto version makes it impossible to render my .qmd file.

Here's the short error from the console:

finding package for biblatex-chicago.sty
ERROR: 
compilation failed- no matching packages
LaTeX Error: File `biblatex-chicago.sty' not found.

Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed,
or enter new name. (Default extension: sty)

Enter file name: 
! Emergency stop.
<read *> 

l.82 \usepackage
              [french]{babel}

Vitamin-D-Thesis.log

I'm not sure if my .log is going to be useful or if it's useful to report. Unless I give you the entirety of my setup which is currently private, making a reproductible example is going to be quite difficult (and it may be that it's actually working). I'm using git version control, so I know that the folder structure and files are exactly the same from one machine to another, but despite this, one machine fails to render the Quarto pdf file. To be clear, executing the same .qmd file with another of my machine in RStudio with latest Quarto version yields no issue despite the files being identical. So I'm not sure there is a problem with my code but rather I guess with something going on with the quarto or latex installation or my cache.

I am thinking of simply deleting everything and reinstalling again but I am also curious to know what the problem is, if it ever comes again. Is it possible to renew the cache or delete temporary files?

Thanks, Minh-Anh

[cderv]

finding package for biblatex-chicago.sty

Are you using specifically a chicago style for LaTeX bibliography ? What is the content of your .qmd file ? Without this, it is hard to help, especially if you customize some options.

To be clear, executing the same .qmd file with another of my machine in RStudio with latest Quarto version yields no issue despite the files being identical.

This type of error is about missing package usually. Here you are missing chicago-biblatex CTAN package in this specific environment that fails

> tinytex::parse_packages(files = "biblatex-chicago.sty")
tlmgr search --file --global "/biblatex-chicago.sty"
[1] "biblatex-chicago"

This missing package should be installed automatically by quarto is missing. Unless you have a specific distribution that does not allows automatic installation by Quarto (which TeX distribution are you using ?) Or maybe your are in offline environment ?

Anyhow, this is LaTeX issue and not Quarto issue really. Unless it should have been install automatically by Quarto.

Hope this helps.