Make intermediates_dir explicit earlier to fix 1980

[atusy]

See #1980 (comment) for why I suggest the change.

[yihui]

Looks good. Thank you!

[atusy]

Oops the test is failing. I'll inspect tomorrow.

[yihui]

Oh, actually this seems to break some tests in the package (as shown in Github actions), so needs further investigation.

[atusy]

OK, finally I passed the tests.

[cderv]

Thanks @atusy !

Just sharing my thoughts here - not a review.

I did not have look closely yet to the initial issue and your fix but from what I can see these changes are targeting important part of the render() code. Paths management are always tricky in rmarkdown.

I've seen in the past that side effects can happen. We should really make sure we cover how it is expected to work before the change to check it still work the same after. I know I added some tests already and I think we should add more to be sure. But there is a lot of edge cases (as the one in the issue - Github document in subdir with space in names).

Maybe I am a bit too cautious but I find this part of the code very tricky and trying to fix a specific bug by a more generic solution could lead to unexpected behavior. And I got bitten by that already in the past.

I'll find time to look closer.

[atusy]

@cderv Thanks. I agree with you. We have to be cautious.

As the issue can be avoided by explicit intermediates_dir, we do not have to be hurry to merge this. Let's take a time.

[cderv]

I commented in #1980 where I tried to better understand the underlying issue. I need to see clearer what happens, and what should happens. In the meantime, if you are ok I would like to hold this PR. thank you.