try to kill and restart quarto

README.md

restart quarto preview server

As per my blog I think quarto is best if you turn it off an on again.

My fix to the many weird bugs and misfeatures in quarto preview is to continually restart preview server. I also try to turn off as much “smart” stuff as possible, disabling the file watcher and the browser navigation. This seems to help both in memory usage and making sure that it serves current content. Currently I do this manually, by running it in a shell and doing a ^C to kill it.

I attempted to define a helper function which kills the quarto process and restarts it automatically, but the wily quarto process seems to evade my attempts to kill it by spawning detached subprocesses or something, so it doesn’t work. Fixes welcome.

quarto_preview_restart --restart-time 300 --port 9888 --no-navigate --no-browser --no-watch-input

quarto_preview_restart.fish

function quarto_preview_restart --description "Run quarto preview in a controlled subshell and manage restarts, with checks for premature termination"
    # Default wait time to 300 seconds
    set wait_time 300

    # Process all arguments to find --restart-time and remove it along with its value
    set -l arg_count (count $argv)
    for i in (seq $arg_count)
        if test "$argv[$i]" = "--restart-time"
            # Set wait time to the next argument
            set wait_time $argv[(math $i+1)]
            # Remove the --restart-time argument and its value
            set -e argv[$i]
            set -e argv[$i]
            break
        end
    end

    while true
        # Run quarto preview in a new shell as a foreground process
        sh -c "quarto preview $argv" &
        set pid $last_pid
        echo "Started quarto preview within a subshell with PID $pid"

        # Initialize a timer
        set elapsed_time 0
        set check_interval 10

        # Monitor the process periodically within the wait time
        while test $elapsed_time -lt $wait_time
            sleep $check_interval
            set elapsed_time (math $elapsed_time + $check_interval)

            # Check if the process is still alive
            if not kill -0 $pid > /dev/null 2>&1
                echo "Process $pid terminated prematurely. Restarting..."
                break
            end
        end

        # If the loop completed without breaking, kill the process
        if test $elapsed_time -ge $wait_time
            kill $pid
            if not kill -0 $pid > /dev/null 2>&1
                echo "Successfully killed quarto preview with PID $pid"
            else
                echo "Failed to kill quarto preview with PID $pid"
            end
        end

        # Wait for the quarto process to terminate before restarting
        wait $pid

        # Optional: wait a moment before restarting
        sleep 1
    end
end