fix: parse rsconnect-args with shell quoting so values can contain spaces

[tdstein]

Bug

deploy/scripts/deploy.sh expands the rsconnect-args input unquoted:

posit connect deploy "$APP_TYPE" ... ${RSCONNECT_ARGS:-} "$DEPLOY_TARGET" ...

Plain Bash word-splitting (IFS) with no quote parsing means rsconnect-args: --title "My App" reaches the CLI as three tokens — --title, "My (with the literal quote), and App" — and the click-based CLI fails with Got unexpected extra argument. There's no way to pass an argument value containing whitespace.

This matters in practice: until posit-dev/rsconnect-python#835 is fixed, passing --title matching the content's exact title is the only way to deploy a manifest under trusted publishing, and content titles routinely contain spaces.

Fixes #79

Fix

Follows the existing EXTRA_FILES pattern (newline-delimited passing, since GitHub Actions outputs can't safely carry arbitrary whitespace/quoting):

• New connect_actions.rsconnect_args module: parse_rsconnect_args() splits the raw string with shlex.split (POSIX shell quoting rules), raising RsconnectArgsError on malformed input (e.g. an unbalanced quote).
• New resolve-rsconnect-args CLI subcommand (cli.py) reads INPUT_RSCONNECT_ARGS, parses it, and writes the result as a newline-delimited rsconnect_args GITHUB_OUTPUT value (same heredoc-style multi-line output extra_files already uses). Parse errors print Error: ... to stderr and exit 1.
• deploy/action.yml: new "Parse rsconnect-args" step runs the subcommand before the deploy step; the deploy step's RSCONNECT_ARGS env now comes from this step's output instead of the raw input.
• deploy/scripts/deploy.sh: reads the newline-delimited value into an RSCONNECT_ARGS_ARR array (mirroring the existing EXTRA_FILE_ARGS loop) and expands it as "${RSCONNECT_ARGS_ARR[@]}" instead of unquoted ${RSCONNECT_ARGS:-}.
• README.md: documented that rsconnect-args supports shell-style quoting, e.g. --title "My App".

Backward compatible: simple space-separated args like --verbose --new parse and behave identically to the old unquoted expansion (verified against the existing e2e workflow's rsconnect-args: --override-python-version ... usage).

Test plan

• uv run pytest — all 77 tests pass, including new unit tests in tests/test_rsconnect_args.py (parsing: empty input, simple flags, double/single quoted values with spaces, mixed args, unbalanced-quote error) and tests/test_cli.py (new resolve-rsconnect-args subcommand: simple flags, quoted values, empty input, parse-error exit code).
• shellcheck deploy/scripts/deploy.sh — clean, no warnings.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[tdstein]

Suggested change

	| `rsconnect-args` | No | Additional arguments passed to `rsconnect deploy`. Supports shell-style quoting for values containing spaces, e.g. `--title "My App"`. |
	| `rsconnect-args` | No | Additional arguments passed to `rsconnect deploy`. |

[nealrichardson]

Awful lot of wrapping for a one liner--can we just python -m this?

[nealrichardson]

Why does this need to be a separate step in the job, rather than just calling the new python utility in deploy.sh?

[nealrichardson]

@claude what do you think of my questions, can this be simplified any?

[posit-connect-projects]

Claude finished @nealrichardson's task in 1m 38s —— View job

---

Reviewing simplification questions

• Read current implementation files
• Analyze Neal's two review questions
• Provide recommendation

---

Both of Neal's points are valid, and yes — this can be simplified quite a bit.

On the separate module (rsconnect_args.py): The entire module wraps a single stdlib call (shlex.split) in a custom exception class and multi-paragraph docstrings. The custom exception doesn't add value over just catching ValueError at the call site. There's no business logic to unit test beyond what shlex already guarantees.

On the separate action step: Unlike extra_files (which comes from config resolution — a genuinely separate concern that runs earlier and feeds multiple consumers), rsconnect-args parsing is purely input preprocessing for the deploy step. There's no reason it can't happen inside deploy.sh itself.

Suggested simplification: Remove the module, the CLI subcommand, and the separate action step. Instead, have deploy.sh receive the raw rsconnect-args input and parse it inline:

# In deploy.sh, replace the current RSCONNECT_ARGS_ARR block with:
RSCONNECT_ARGS_ARR=()
if [ -n "${RSCONNECT_ARGS:-}" ]; then
  while IFS= read -r rsconnect_arg; do
    [ -n "$rsconnect_arg" ] && RSCONNECT_ARGS_ARR+=("$rsconnect_arg")
  done < <(python3 -c "
import shlex, sys
try:
    print('\n'.join(shlex.split(sys.argv[1])))
except ValueError as e:
    print(f'Error: Could not parse rsconnect-args: {e}', file=sys.stderr)
    sys.exit(1)
" "$RSCONNECT_ARGS")
fi

And in action.yml, pass the raw input directly to the deploy step (RSCONNECT_ARGS: ${{ inputs.rsconnect-args }}) instead of routing through a parse step's output.

This eliminates ~130 lines (module + CLI handler + tests + action step + comments) while preserving the exact same behavior: shell-quoting-aware splitting with a clear error on malformed input. The set -euo pipefail in deploy.sh ensures a parse failure still halts the deploy.

The test coverage for this becomes an e2e concern (which the existing workflow already covers with rsconnect-args: --override-python-version ...), and you could add one e2e case with a quoted value if desired.

---

[nealrichardson]

@claude please do the simplifications in #80 (comment)

[posit-connect-projects]

Claude finished @nealrichardson's task in 2m 42s —— View job

---

Simplifying rsconnect-args parsing

• Read current implementation files
• Remove src/connect_actions/rsconnect_args.py module
• Remove resolve-rsconnect-args CLI subcommand from cli.py
• Remove separate "Parse rsconnect-args" step from deploy/action.yml
• Update deploy/scripts/deploy.sh to parse inline with Python one-liner
• Remove tests/test_rsconnect_args.py
• Remove rsconnect-args tests from tests/test_cli.py
• Apply tdstein's README suggestion
• Run tests to verify (62 pass, 3 pre-existing failures from missing uv)
• Commit and push

Done. Removed ~170 lines by inlining the shlex.split call directly in deploy.sh instead of routing through a separate Python module, CLI subcommand, and action step. The deploy script now receives the raw rsconnect-args input and parses it with a python3 -c one-liner — same quoting behavior, much less machinery. shellcheck and all relevant tests pass.
|

[github-actions]

Preview deployed to Connect (localhost:3942): http://localhost:3942/connect/#/apps/e23be7a3-4807-4efd-a578-0c0596d1c78c/draft/8

Deployed from commit b5fcc29.

[github-actions]

Cleaned up 1 preview bundle(s) on http://localhost:3942: 8

[github-actions]

Preview deployed to Connect (localhost:3940): http://localhost:3940/connect/#/apps/e02c7bd1-8fea-4521-9f95-efb5ab60f585/draft/8

Deployed from commit b5fcc29.

[github-actions]

Preview deployed to Connect (localhost:3941): http://localhost:3941/connect/#/apps/8a7b1350-5f05-41aa-a77a-5de9ef67858f/draft/8

Deployed from commit b5fcc29.

[github-actions]

Cleaned up 1 preview bundle(s) on http://localhost:3940: 8

[github-actions]

Cleaned up 1 preview bundle(s) on http://localhost:3941: 8

[tdstein]

LGTM (can't approve because I'm the author), thanks for iterating on it!