Thank you for reporting this.

First, could you upgrade Quarto to 1.3?

Could you try to use a tar.gz archive instead?
Could you try to install an extension from GitHub, e.g., quarto add https://github.com/mcanouil/quarto-lua-env/archive/refs/heads/main.zip? (This is working for me and since your extension is not public, I can't test a zip from and made by GitLab).

Note:

• From https://quarto.org/docs/extensions/managing.html#repositories.

  While it’s convenient to distribute extensions using GitHub, you can also distribute them as an ordinary gzip archive using a URL or a local file. See the article on Distributing Extensions for additional details.

• From https://quarto.org/docs/extensions/distributing.html

  Bundle your extension into a .zip or .tar.gz archive.

Depending on the page, it's not obvious if zip is supposed to work or not.

This is possibly related to #2419 and #2081

Thanks @mcanouil for the prompt response. I hope, you will still consider installing extensions from GitLab since I'm obliged to develop in the own institution. Otherwise I had already met people in our own premises, who are very interested on development and use of quarto extensions. Of course, it implies an additional effort for you and respect the focus on GitHub.

It's supposed to work.

There is two things here:

• some inconsistencies in the documentation
• issues with handling zip file made by GitLab

This is why I wanted you to try to install an extension as zip from GitHub, i.e., to rule out something fishy in your setup.

Sorry, @mcanouil. I just realized that the project was by mistake private, now I made it public and you could test:

quarto add https://gitlab.cc-asp.fraunhofer.de/quarto-extensions/mdz/-/archive/main/shorty-main.zip

Sorry, @mcanouil. I just realized that the project was by mistake private, now I made it public and you could test:

quarto add https://gitlab.cc-asp.fraunhofer.de/quarto-extensions/mdz/-/archive/main/shorty-main.zip

... and this was the solution. After making it public, I managed to install the extension 🥳 .

Could you update the title to highlight the "private repo" aspect?

In the end it's related to the following feature request to handle private repositories, see #4444

I think, this issue may be closed.

Reopening this as it's still not possible to install from private repository as far as I can tell.

I made a PR to clarify #5827 (comment).

As suggested initially by @cderv (#4444 (comment)) it would be great if Quarto was able to leverage usual credentials store.

For GitHub:

• tar: https://docs.github.com/en/rest/repos/contents?apiVersion=2022-11-28#download-a-repository-archive-tar
• zip: https://docs.github.com/en/rest/repos/contents?apiVersion=2022-11-28#download-a-repository-archive-zip

For GitLab:

• https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/repositories.html#get-file-archive

Another vote for extension installation from a private repository. If possible, use existing configuration (credentials, SSH keys, etc) to obtain the targeted extension from the Git repository.

If it helps, adding a private repository could require the full repository path, leaving the "username/repo" syntax for extensions in public repositories.

quarto add [email protected]:company/private-extension.git

As a workaround which can be applied to any setup/host:

export GIT_PAT=...

• using Git

git clone --depth 1 "https://${GIT_PAT}@github.com/organisation/repository.git" /tmp/quarto-extension
quarto add /tmp/quarto-extension
rm -rf /tmp/quarto-extension

• using CURL

curl -L -H "Authorization: token ${GIT_PAT}" \
  -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.v3+json" \
  https://api.github.com/repos/organisation/repository/zipball/main \
  -o /tmp/quarto-extension.zip
quarto add /tmp/quarto-extension.zip
rm -rf /tmp/quarto-extension.zip

Use your preferred authentication method, especially for git clone: SSH, https via credentials store, or as above via a token.

In some aspects related to:

• Support proxy definition for fetch operation by using custom http client using proxy env var or flags to command line #5515