[R-pkg-devel] NOTE about lack of prebuilt manual

? Tue, 9 Jul 2024 08:54:22 +0000
"Viechtbauer, Wolfgang (NP)"
<wolfgang.viechtbauer at maastrichtuniversity.nl> ?????:

This appears to be related to this change
(https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-devel/NEWS.html):

- tools::checkRd() (used by R CMD check) detects more problems with
?\Sexpr?-based dynamic content, including bad nesting of ?\Sexpr?s
and invalid arguments.

The exact change was:

r85348 | hornik | 2023-10-18 08:13:46 +0000 (Wed, 18 Oct 2023) | 1 line
Build PDF refman only when explicitly asked for.

--- src/library/tools/R/build.R (revision 85347)
+++ src/library/tools/R/build.R (revision 85348)
@@ -633,7 +633,7 @@
         }

        needRefman <- manual &&
-            parse_description_field(desc, "BuildManual", TRUE) &&
+            parse_description_field(desc, "BuildManual", FALSE) &&
             any(btinfo[, "later"])
        if (needRefman) {
            messageLog(Log, "building the PDF package manual")

So now R CMD build only builds the manual when both BuildManual is set
to yes _and_ there are \Sexpr{}s with [stage=install or render].
(Previously BuildManual: yes was assumed by default.)

Was the motivation for this change to make R CMD build faster for
everyone, with the expectation that the relatively rare package
maintainers with non-[stage=build] \Sexpr{}s will set BuildManual: yes
to adapt?

Best regards,
Ivan