Large '_files' folder created by RStudio, causing slow version control with Git

[tlyim]

When using quarto in RStudio for Windows, it creates a large '_files' folder (5.49MB) causing slow version control with Git for the initial commit. A different large '_files' folder is created for each .qmd file, although the files in the folder look identical.

Such duplicated large '_files' folders (5.49MB), even for a minimum example like the following, freeze the Git version control operation.

Is there a workaround for this issue?

---
title: "Minimum Example"
format: revealjs
editor: visual
---

## Minimum Example

- item 1.0
  - item 1.1
  - item 1.2
- item 1.0
  - item 1.1
  - item 1.2

::: {.fragment}
- item 1.0

  ::: {.fragment}
  - item 1.1
  :::
  
  ::: {.fragment}
  - item 1.2
  :::
::: 

[cscheid]

There are a few ways to handle this:

1. Add entries such as *_files to your .gitignore file (see this tutorial for information on the syntax to use). This will prevent git from adding those build artifacts to the repository.
2. If you nevertheless want to check in build artifacts like these, and if you have a larger set of pages and you want to render all of them, you might want to consider a quarto website. This will make sure that these resource files are shared across your generated HTML files.

[jakobarendt]

@cscheid, can I also add *_files/ to my .gitignore if I want to use GitHub Actions for publishing without executing code (i.e. by checking in the _freeze/ directory), as described here? Or does successful rendering in such a setup depend on the *_files/ directories not being ignored by Git?

[tlyim]

@cscheid Thank you for your suggestons. Very helpful.

For other beginners who also prefer the second suggestion (quarto website: https://quarto.org/docs/websites/#rstudio), I started a new quarto project for revealjs presentations under my subdirectory for git repos (eg, D:/github/quarto/revealjs). Next I added the global specification in the _quarto.yml file there, like

project:
  type: website

website:
  title: "revealjs"
  navbar:
    left:
      - href: index.qmd
        text: Home
      - about.qmd

format:
  html:
    theme: cosmo
    css: styles.css
    toc: true

editor: visual


include-after-body:
  text: |
    <style>
    .reveal .slide ul {
      margin-bottom: 0;
    }
    </style>

The last part above is due to my preference from this discussion.

Then all .qmd files created in the /revealjs subdirectory or its lower-level subdirectories will follow the global specification and will not create separate _files subfolders that waste storage space.

[roland-KA]

That's really helpful and avoids the generation of a revealjs-subfolder for each document.

Is it possible to bring that one step further? I'm also using Quarto to produce revealjs presentations. I.e. it isn't my intention to create a web site. Therefore my format section looks as follows:

format:
  revealjs:
    theme: [default, lecture.scss]
    chalkboard: true
    scrollable: true

But using format: revealjs doesn't give me the possibility to automatically create an index.html-file with a navigation bar etc.

So my question is: Is it possible to create the index.html (in the form it is done using format: html) but convert the individual documents into a revealjs-presentation (using some custom theme)?