Crash in pdf_render_page()

[gergness]

With this file (a powerpoint presentation saved as a pdf) and code below, I can crash R on my machine 90% of the time. Activity manager reports 6GB of memory free when I start.

(Probably a duplicate of ropensci/magick#415, but wanted to provided a hopefully reproducible example)

library(pdftools)
pdf_file <- "~/Downloads/Presentation1.pdf"
for (iii in 1:25) {
  img <- pdf_render_page(pdf_file, page = iii, opw = "")
}

Session info

library(magick)
#> Linking to ImageMagick 6.9.13.29
#> Enabled features: cairo, fontconfig, freetype, heic, lcms, pango, raw, rsvg, webp
#> Disabled features: fftw, ghostscript, x11
library(pdftools)
#> Using poppler version 25.09.1
devtools::session_info()
#> ─ Session info ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
#>  setting  value
#>  version  R version 4.5.1 (2025-06-13)
#>  os       macOS Sequoia 15.0.1
#>  system   aarch64, darwin20
#>  ui       X11
#>  language (EN)
#>  collate  en_US.UTF-8
#>  ctype    en_US.UTF-8
#>  tz       America/Chicago
#>  date     2025-10-13
#>  pandoc   3.6.3 @ /Applications/RStudio.app/Contents/Resources/app/quarto/bin/tools/aarch64/ (via rmarkdown)
#>  quarto   1.7.32 @ /Applications/RStudio.app/Contents/Resources/app/quarto/bin/quarto
#> 
#> ─ Packages ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
#>  package     * version date (UTC) lib source
#>  askpass       1.2.1   2024-10-04 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  cachem        1.1.0   2024-05-16 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  cli           3.6.5   2025-04-23 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  devtools      2.4.6   2025-10-03 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  digest        0.6.37  2024-08-19 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  ellipsis      0.3.2   2021-04-29 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  evaluate      1.0.5   2025-08-27 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  fastmap       1.2.0   2024-05-15 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  fs            1.6.6   2025-04-12 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  glue          1.8.0   2024-09-30 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  htmltools     0.5.8.1 2024-04-04 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  knitr         1.50    2025-03-16 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  lifecycle     1.0.4   2023-11-07 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  magick      * 2.9.0   2025-09-08 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  magrittr      2.0.4   2025-09-12 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  memoise       2.0.1   2021-11-26 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  pdftools    * 3.6.0   2025-09-10 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  pkgbuild      1.4.8   2025-05-26 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  pkgload       1.4.1   2025-09-23 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  purrr         1.1.0   2025-07-10 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  qpdf          1.4.1   2025-07-02 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  R6            2.6.1   2025-02-15 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  Rcpp          1.1.0   2025-07-02 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  remotes       2.5.0   2024-03-17 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  reprex        2.1.1   2024-07-06 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  rlang         1.1.6   2025-04-11 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  rmarkdown     2.30    2025-09-28 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  rstudioapi    0.17.1  2024-10-22 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  sessioninfo   1.2.3   2025-02-05 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  usethis       3.2.1   2025-09-06 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  vctrs         0.6.5   2023-12-01 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  withr         3.0.2   2024-10-28 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  xfun          0.53    2025-08-19 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#>  yaml          2.3.10  2024-07-26 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
#> 
#>  [1] /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.5-arm64/Resources/library
#>  * ── Packages attached to the search path.
#> 
#> ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

[jeroen]

Could you test if this can be narrowed down to pdftools only? image_read_pdf() is a wrapper of pdftools

[gergness]

Yeah, it can. Want me to move the issue?

[jeroen]

I've transferred it, can you update your example code?

[gergness]

Was trying to investigate further, and found that I can reliably get the crash by installing from CRAN (which uses poppler version 25.09.1), but if I install from source (and using doppler version 25.10.0) I no longer get the crash.

[jeroen]

@kalibera this seems like a problem in the rtools build of poppler

[kalibera]

I can't reproduce the crash on my system.

I am currently testing an Rtools45 update, which uses poppler 25.10.0. If you want to test with that on your system, you can get a copy from https://www.r-project.org/nosvn/winutf8/ucrt3/ (and install at least R package pdftools from source).

[gergness]

Cool, I'm glad I have a solution and that there's a path forward.

I do see that link is to windows tools, but note I'm on a Mac, and I see the error when installing mac binaries. @kalibera are you still the right person?

[kalibera]

Cool, I'm glad I have a solution and that there's a path forward.

I do see that link is to windows tools, but note I'm on a Mac, and I see the error when installing mac binaries. @kalibera are you still the right person?

Ah, sorry, I thought it was windows as I was pinged here. If you are on macOS, the person maintaining the CRAN external software distribution is Simon Urbanek (https://github.com/R-macos/recipes). So if you wanted to suggest an update of poppler, you can do it there. Of course, ideally, one would debug the problem and confirm it was fixed in the newer version (sometimes it is possible just from reading a change log). For me on Windows, your program didn't crash even with older poppler.

[jeroen]

OK apologies for tagging you Tomas, I assumed the user was on Windows. I'll debug it.