[R-pkg-devel] is R CMD build --compact-vignettes working as expected?

    Thanks for the tip, I'll take a look.

    Given that three relatively experienced package authors all seem to
have experienced similar issues, it seems that maybe this is worth
figuring out/maybe I'm not just doing something boneheaded.

    cheers
      Ben

On 10/7/20 8:31 PM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:

I don't know the answer to your question, but you can debug the
--compact-vignettes option as follows.

debug(tools::compactPDF)
tools:::.build_packages(c("--compact-vignettes", "pkgdir"))

where "pkgdir" is the directory of the source of your package.? Add
extra options to the build as separate elements of the argument to
.build():? this function is called after args have been parsed.

When I do that, I see that it rejects the compaction, because none of
mine benefit much from it:? it wants at least a 10% and 10K reduction.
But Ben's example met those criteria.? When I trick it into accepting
the compaction, it does put the compacted PDF into the tarball.

Duncan Murdoch

On 07/10/2020 6:03 p.m., John Fox wrote:

Dear Ben,

On 2020-10-07 5:26 p.m., Ben Bolker wrote:

 ? ? I hope so too. The (annoying) workaround is to compact the vignette
yourself (using qpdf directly or using tools::compactPDF), then use
no-build-vignettes.? The problem there is whatever's supposed to happen
with building vignette indices.? The uuuuugly workaround, I guess, is to
build the tarball, compact the vignettes oneself, then *replace* them in
the tarball.? (Obviously I can automate that, but it seems as though it
would be unnecessary if I knew what was going on ...)

I've used both of these workarounds and agree that it would be nice to
avoid them. After all, what is the --compact-vignettes argument for?

Best,
 ?? John

 ? ? cheers
 ? ?? Ben


On 10/7/20 4:10 PM, John Fox wrote:

Dear Ben,

I was hoping that someone would pick up on this problem, because I've
experienced the same issue of --compact-vignettes apparently ignored,
e.g., with the Rcmdr package under R 4.0.2 on both macOS and Windows.

Best,
 ???John

John Fox, Professor Emeritus
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
web: https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/jfox/

On 2020-10-05 1:09 p.m., Ben Bolker wrote:

 ??? Am I confused, or doing something wrong, or ... ?

 ??? I have qpdf installed, and am running R CMD build with
--compact-vignettes, but the PDF in the tarball doesn't seem to be
compressed despite the fact that the output messages say "compacting
vignettes ..."


 ??? $ R CMD build --compact-vignettes lme4
* checking for file ?lme4/DESCRIPTION? ... OK
* preparing ?lme4?:
* checking DESCRIPTION meta-information ... OK
* cleaning src
* installing the package to process help pages
* saving partial Rd database
* creating vignettes ... OK
Warning: ?inst/doc? files
 ????? ?lmerperf.html?, ?lmer.pdf?, ?PLSvGLS.pdf?, ?Theory.pdf?
 ??? ignored as vignettes have been rebuilt.
 ??? Run R CMD build with --no-build-vignettes to prevent rebuilding.
* compacting vignettes and other PDF files
* cleaning src
* checking for LF line-endings in source and make files and shell
scripts
* checking for empty or unneeded directories
* building ?lme4_1.1-24.tar.gz?

 ??? The copy of lmer.pdf in the resulting tarball is 900K or so:

$ tar ztvf lme4_1.1-24.tar.gz lme4/inst/doc/lmer.pdf
-rw-r--r-- bolker/bolker 907022 2020-10-05 12:59
lme4/inst/doc/lmer.pdf

 ??? The previously built (and manually compacted) version of lmer.pdf
in the tarball is 500K:

$ ls -l lme4/inst/doc/lmer.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 bolker bolker 495199 Oct? 3 22:15 lme4/inst/doc/lmer.pdf

 ???? Is 'R CMD build' confused by the presence of a pre-built PDF in
the inst/doc directory? Or am I somehow mistaken about how this is
supposed to work?

 ???? I would just use --no-build-vignettes and submit the tarball with
the previously built/compressed PDF, but I'm trying to avoid a
"Package has a VignetteBuilder field but no prebuilt vignette index"
NOTE, which I assume is missing because I built without building
vignettes ... ?

 ??? As always, enlightenment is welcome.

 ??? cheers
 ????? Ben Bolker