R CMD check problem with R 3.0.2

This has been asked soooo many times that I think it may be a good
idea for R CMD check to just stop when the user passes a directory
instead of a tar ball to it, or automatically run R CMD build before
moving on. In my opinion, sometimes an FAQ and a bug are not entirely
different.

Regards,
Yihui
--
Yihui Xie <xieyihui at gmail.com>
Web: http://yihui.name
Department of Statistics, Iowa State University
2215 Snedecor Hall, Ames, IA


On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 10:37 AM, Sanford Weisberg <sandy at umn.edu> wrote:

Using SUSE Linux, Windows 32 bit and Windows 64 bit R 3.0.2 , I am unable
to use R CMD check successfully.  Here is the Windows 64 bit report:


Z:\R\source\effects>R CMD check pkg
* using log directory 'Z:/R/source/effects/pkg.Rcheck'
* using R version 3.0.2 (2013-09-25)
* using platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32 (64-bit)
* using session charset: ISO8859-1
* checking for file 'pkg/DESCRIPTION' ... ERROR
Required fields missing or empty:
 'Author' 'Maintainer'

The file DESCRIPTION looks like this:

Package: effects
Version: 2.3-0
Date: 2013/10/22
Title: Effect Displays for Linear, Generalized Linear, Multinomial-Logit,
Proportional-Odds Logit Models and Mixed-Effects Models
Authors at R: c(person("John", "Fox", role = c("aut", "cre"), email = "
jfox at mcmaster.ca"),
   person("Sanford", "Weisberg", role = "aut", email = "sandy at umn.edu"),
   person("Michael", "Friendly", role = "aut", email = "friendly at yorku.ca
"),
   person("Jangman", "Hong", role = "aut"),
   person("Robert", "Andersen", role = "ctb"),
   person("David", "Firth", role = "ctb"),
   person("Steve", "Taylor", role = "ctb"))
Depends: lattice, grid, colorspace
Suggests: nlme, lme4, MASS, nnet, poLCA, heplots
LazyLoad: yes
LazyData: yes
Description:
 Graphical and tabular effect displays, e.g., of interactions, for linear
 generalized linear, multinomial-logit, proportional-odds logit models,
 mixed-effect models,  polytomous latent-class models and multivariate
linear models.
License: GPL (>= 2)
URL: http://www.r-project.org, http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox/

The 'Author' and 'Maintainer' fields should be automatically generated.
With version 3.0.1, I had no such problem, and my coauthors who use Eciplse
and R-studio have no problems with R 3.0.2.  John Fox suggested the
following:

When R CMD build creates a package tarball it writes the information from
Authors at R into the
Author and Maintainer fields. I think that Sandy's
problem is produced by checking the package source directory rather than a
package source tarball. I use RStudio to check packages, and it
automatically builds the tarball first, which is the recommended procedure.
R-Forge does that too. Michael uses Eclipse, and if I remember right, it too
creates a tarball (but I haven't used it in quite some time).

Is this a bug in R CMD check?


--
Sanford Weisberg, sandy at umn.edu
<sandy at umn.edu>
For undergraduate matters:  undergrad at stat.umn.edu
University of Minnesota, School of Statistics
312 Ford Hall, 224 Church St. SE, Minneapolis, MN  55455
612-625-8355, FAX 612-624-8868

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