UTF-8 encoding issue with R CMD check with install-args="--latex"

Peter Ruckdeschel writes:

Thanks Ivan and Kurt, for nailing this down, best regards, Peter
Am 17.01.2025 um 09:01 schrieb Kurt Hornik:

Ivan Krylov via R-devel writes:

Thanks.  Will try to fix ...

Best
-k

? Thu, 16 Jan 2025 18:09:25 +0100
Peter Ruckdeschel via R-devel <r-devel at r-project.org> ?????:

this is to report some minor UTF-8 encoding issue with R CMD check
with option --install-args="--latex" (and possibly more install-args).

Thank you for a very detailed report!
This doesn't happen on R-4.2.2 or 4.3.1, but it does happen on R-devel.
Comparing the calls from R CMD check to R CMD Rd2pdf, I see no
difference in the environment variables or any significant difference
in the command lines. The command being run ends up being equivalent to
R CMD Rd2pdf <package>.Rcheck/<package>
...and the source of the difference is the presence (or absence) of the
<package>.Rcheck/<package>/latex directory. If I temporarily move it
away during an R CMD check --install-args=--latex run, the command
succeeds.
Indeed, tools:::.pkg2tex says

## First check for a latex dir (from R CMD INSTALL --latex).
## Second guess is this is a >= 2.10.0 package with stored .rds
## files.
## If it does not exist, guess this is a source package.
latexdir <- file.path(pkgdir, "latex")

The individual *.tex files in the latex/ subdirectory of the installed
package all do start with an "\inputencoding{utf8}" line.
When the latex/ subdirectory doesn't exist, the !dir.exists(latexdir)
branch is taken, where Rd2latex(...) is called with writeEncoding =
FALSE, thus avoiding the problem.
--
Best regards,
Ivan