Error when running serve_site(): "Error in as.vector(x, "character"): cannot coerce type 'environment' to vector of type 'character'"

[bagasbgy]

When running serve_site(), I get an error like this:

Error in as.vector(x, "character"): cannot coerce type 'environment' to vector of type 'character'

The problem is I can't get more information about the error from the message, so I can't track where I got wrong.

Previously, It is running well on my desktop. Just got this error after not blogging for a while.

If this is helping, this is my blog repo: https://github.com/bagasbgy/blog. And this is my sessionInfo():

R version 3.5.2 (2018-12-20)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Running under: Linux Mint 19.1

Matrix products: default
BLAS: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/atlas/libblas.so.3.10.3
LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/atlas/liblapack.so.3.10.3

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C              
 [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8    
 [5] LC_MONETARY=id_ID.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8   
 [7] LC_PAPER=id_ID.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C                 
 [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C            
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=id_ID.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C       

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] blogdown_0.10.5

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] Rcpp_1.0.0        bookdown_0.9      digest_0.6.18     later_0.7.5.9001 
 [5] R6_2.3.0          magrittr_1.5      evaluate_0.12     rstudioapi_0.9.0 
 [9] promises_1.0.1    rmarkdown_1.11    tools_3.5.2       servr_0.11.2     
[13] httpuv_1.4.5.9002 xfun_0.4          compiler_3.5.2    htmltools_0.3.6  
[17] knitr_1.21

[yihui]

Here is the first step for debugging: make a copy of your website project (i.e. make a backup), delete all Rmd files (file.remove(list.files(, '[.]Rmd$', recursive = TRUE, full.names = TRUE))), and blogdown::serve_site(). If the error disappears, there must be something wrong in a certain Rmd, and blogdown is unlikely to be the culprit.

[bagasbgy]

Thanks @yihui for the suggestion, but already tried it, still, had no luck:

03:29:04 > file.remove(list.files(, '[.]Rmd$', recursive = TRUE, full.names = TRUE))
 [1] TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE
03:29:06 > blogdown::serve_site()
Building sites … WARN 2019/02/07 03:29:15 Data for key 'font_size_small' in path 'hugo-academic/fonts/default.toml' is overridden by higher precedence data already in the data tree
WARN 2019/02/07 03:29:15 Data for key 'name' in path 'hugo-academic/fonts/default.toml' is overridden by higher precedence data already in the data tree
WARN 2019/02/07 03:29:15 Data for key 'google_fonts' in path 'hugo-academic/fonts/default.toml' is overridden by higher precedence data already in the data tree
WARN 2019/02/07 03:29:15 Data for key 'heading_font' in path 'hugo-academic/fonts/default.toml' is overridden by higher precedence data already in the data tree
WARN 2019/02/07 03:29:15 Data for key 'body_font' in path 'hugo-academic/fonts/default.toml' is overridden by higher precedence data already in the data tree
WARN 2019/02/07 03:29:15 Data for key 'nav_font' in path 'hugo-academic/fonts/default.toml' is overridden by higher precedence data already in the data tree
WARN 2019/02/07 03:29:15 Data for key 'mono_font' in path 'hugo-academic/fonts/default.toml' is overridden by higher precedence data already in the data tree
WARN 2019/02/07 03:29:15 Data for key 'font_size' in path 'hugo-academic/fonts/default.toml' is overridden by higher precedence data already in the data tree

                   | EN  
+------------------+----+
  Pages            | 41  
  Paginator pages  |  0  
  Non-page files   | 14  
  Static files     | 16  
  Processed images |  3  
  Aliases          | 15  
  Sitemaps         |  1  
  Cleaned          |  0  

Total in 1478 ms
Error in as.vector(x, "character") : 
  cannot coerce type 'environment' to vector of type 'character'

I'm sorry I forgot to tell you that build_site() run successfully--even with all of my .Rmds. I also tried to install devel version of servr, and still got the error.

So any suggestion to debug why serve_site() got that error?

[yihui]

Does traceback() tell you anything? Can you also try to use the CRAN versions of later and httpuv (remember to restart R)?

[bagasbgy]

Well, after installing the CRAN versions of later and httpuv, it works again!

This is the output from traceback() when it still got an error, maybe it could helps:

10:31:41 > traceback()
11: as.character.default(X[[i]], ...)
10: FUN(X[[i]], ...)
9: lapply(list(...), as.character)
8: .makeMessage(..., domain = domain, appendLF = appendLF)
7: message("To stop the server, run servr::daemon_stop(\"", server, 
       "\")", " or restart your R session")
6: daemon_hint(id)
5: res$start_server(app)
4: dynamic_site(dir, ..., build = watch_dir(watch, pattern = pattern, 
       all_files = all_files, handler = handler))
3: servr::httw(site.dir = pdir, baseurl = baseurl, handler = function(...) {
       files = c(...)
       files = files[substr(files, 1, n) != pdir]
       if (length(grep("(_?layouts?|static)/|[.](toml|yaml)$", files)) || 
           length(grep(md_pattern, files))) 
           build_site(TRUE)
   }, dir = ".", ...)
2: serve(...)
1: blogdown::serve_site()

Thank you so much @yihui !

[yihui]

That was very helpful. I just fixed the issue in servr. If you use the dev version of httpuv, you'll have to use the dev version of servr, too. Thanks!

[mdozmorov]

@yihui - got the same problem. Even after remotes::install_github('rstudio/blogdown') and
(file.remove(list.files(, '[.R]md$', recursive = TRUE, full.names = TRUE))), blogdown::serve_site() gives:

Error in as.vector(x, "character") : 
  cannot coerce type 'environment' to vector of type 'character'

and the the output from traceback():

11: as.character.default(X[[i]], ...)
10: FUN(X[[i]], ...)
9: lapply(list(...), as.character)
8: .makeMessage(..., domain = domain, appendLF = appendLF)
7: message("To stop the server, run servr::daemon_stop(\"", server, 
       "\")", " or restart your R session")
6: daemon_hint(id)
5: res$start_server(app)
4: dynamic_site(dir, ..., build = watch_dir(watch, pattern = pattern, 
       all_files = all_files, handler = handler))
3: servr::httw(site.dir = pdir, baseurl = baseurl, handler = function(...) {
       files = c(...)
       files = files[substr(files, 1, n) != pdir]
       if (length(grep("(_?layouts?|static)/|[.](toml|yaml)$", files)) || 
           length(grep(md_pattern, files))) 
           build_site(TRUE)
   }, dir = ".", ...)
2: serve(...)
1: blogdown::serve_site()

The same website worked two month ago. Please, help.

[yihui]

@mdozmorov When in doubt, upgrade. And restart R. If the problem persists, please read the issue guide and provide the necessary information: https://github.com/rstudio/blogdown/blob/master/.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md

[mdozmorov]

Thank you, @yihui, updating R and packages helped. This issue extending the list of solved ones at https://yihui.name/en/2017/05/when-in-doubt-upgrade/

[yihui]

@mdozmorov Perfect. Thanks for letting me know! :)