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Repository actions

Overview

When a website’s source lives in a public repository, Quarto can add links that send readers straight to it — to edit the current page, to view its source, or to file an issue:

website:
  repo-url: https://github.com/owner/repo
  repo-actions: [edit, source, issue]

On a page with a table of contents, the links render twice: at the foot of the TOC, and again in the page footer, where responsive classes keep them visible on narrow viewports where the TOC is hidden. On a page with no table of contents, they render once, in the footer.

Configuration

repo-actions is a list drawn from:

action link
edit “Edit this page” — opens the source file in the host’s web editor
source “View source” — opens the source file for reading
issue “Report an issue” — opens the issue tracker

Use none to clear the list. An unrecognized entry is skipped and reported (Q-13-12); the remaining actions still render. none clears the list completely: if you also set issue-url, its “Report an issue” link is cleared too, because none says you want no repository action links on the page. Setting issue-url without a repo-actions list still gives you the one issue link.

repo-actions requires repo-url — without it, Quarto has no base to build edit and source links from, and no default target for issue. Setting repo-actions with no repo-url (and no issue-url) reports Q-13-11 and renders no links.

A few supporting keys, set alongside repo-url:

website:
  repo-url: https://github.com/owner/repo
  repo-actions: [edit, source, issue]
  repo-branch: main
  repo-subdir: docs
  issue-url: https://github.com/owner/repo/issues/new
  repo-link-target: _blank
  repo-link-rel: noopener
  • repo-branch — the branch the edit and source links point at. Defaults to main.
  • repo-subdir — set this when the website’s project lives in a subdirectory of its repository, so that source paths resolve correctly.
  • issue-url — a custom issue tracker URL, used in place of the repository’s default /issues/new. Setting issue-url adds a “Report an issue” link even if issue is not in repo-actions.
  • repo-link-target / repo-link-rel — become target= and rel= attributes on the generated anchors.

All of these can be overridden per page in front matter — but repo-actions itself cannot. In front matter, repo-actions is only the false switch described below.

Turning actions off for one page

Set repo-actions: false in a page’s front matter to suppress the links on that page only:

---
title: My Page
repo-actions: false
---

Interaction with page-footer

Setting page-footer: false — at the site or page level — suppresses the page footer entirely, and with it the footer copy of the repo action links. This is a deliberate divergence from Quarto 1, where the footer copy is not tied to page-footer. On a page with a table of contents, the TOC copy is unaffected and the links still appear there; on a page with no table of contents, page-footer: false removes the links from the page altogether, since the footer was their only placement.

Known limitations

Page-level repo-actions: true is not supported. In Quarto 1, setting repo-actions: true in front matter never turned the actions on by itself — the action list always came from the site’s website.repo-actions — it only requested a different placement (the right margin) on a page with no table of contents. Quarto 2 does not implement that placement: the value is ignored and reported as Q-13-13 (severity info). Nothing is lost but the position — the links still render in the footer at every width.

.ipynb pages get no “Edit this page” link outside GitHub. For notebook source files, an edit link only works on github.com, where Quarto rewrites it to github.dev so the notebook opens in an editor rather than as rendered JSON. On any other host the edit link is omitted for .ipynb pages — “View source” and “Report an issue” are unaffected. This matches Quarto 1’s behavior.