I'm not a regular reader of r-sig-mac, but have a question about CRAN LaTeX infrastructure for MacOS. This may be a question specifically for Simon Urbanek, but thought I'd check here first in case anyone has insights. I recently sent a new version of the lme4 package (1.1-38) to CRAN; it passed all the incoming tests, but I'm now seeing warnings (at https://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_results_lme4.html) from the r-release-macos-arm64 and r-oldrel-macos-arm64 (but *not* from the x86_64 platforms): > ! LaTeX Error: File `blkarray.sty' not found. This hasn't happened before. Furthermore, when I go back in the git log for the package I see: commit 3140cc0f1b394c6888d7704ee3d5de5f45df2886 Author: Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com> Date: Thu Aug 10 10:28:55 2017 -0400 .Rbuildignore blkarray.sty as per CRAN request In particular, Kurt Hornik sent a mass e-mail in 2017 to many package maintainers saying: > These [packages] contain copies of standard LaTeX .sty files which should be excluded from the package (as shipping these copies should not be necessary, and may even cause trouble in case the local copies become outdated [as just happened for a recent CRAN submission]). So my best guess is that this is an oversight/platform glitch on the arm64 platforms ... Thoughts? sincerely Ben Bolker
CRAN LaTeX infrastructure for packages
6 messages · Peter Dalgaard, Marc Schwartz, Ben Bolker +1 more
Hi Ben, For whatever is is worth, I do have (on an M4) % find /usr/local -name blkarray.sty /usr/local/texlive/2024/texmf-dist/tex/latex/blkarray/blkarray.sty and I don't recall doing anything special to get it. So yes, most likely there's a glitch in the TeX install on the macos-arm64 builder. -pd
On 3 Dec 2025, at 01.10, Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com> wrote: I'm not a regular reader of r-sig-mac, but have a question about CRAN LaTeX infrastructure for MacOS. This may be a question specifically for Simon Urbanek, but thought I'd check here first in case anyone has insights. I recently sent a new version of the lme4 package (1.1-38) to CRAN; it passed all the incoming tests, but I'm now seeing warnings (at https://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_results_lme4.html) from the r-release-macos-arm64 and r-oldrel-macos-arm64 (but *not* from the x86_64 platforms):
! LaTeX Error: File `blkarray.sty' not found.
This hasn't happened before. Furthermore, when I go back in the git log for the package I see: commit 3140cc0f1b394c6888d7704ee3d5de5f45df2886 Author: Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com> Date: Thu Aug 10 10:28:55 2017 -0400 .Rbuildignore blkarray.sty as per CRAN request In particular, Kurt Hornik sent a mass e-mail in 2017 to many package maintainers saying:
These [packages] contain copies of standard LaTeX .sty files which should be excluded from the package (as shipping these copies should not be necessary, and may even cause trouble in case the local copies become outdated [as just happened for a recent CRAN submission]).
So my best guess is that this is an oversight/platform glitch on the arm64 platforms ... Thoughts? sincerely Ben Bolker
_______________________________________________ R-SIG-Mac mailing list R-SIG-Mac at r-project.org https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
Peter Dalgaard, Professor, Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark Phone: (+45)38153501 Office: A 4.23 Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
Hi, As far as I know, that style file is part of the standard MacTeX distribution, which is built upon TeX Live, and includes the blkarray package by default. I have it installed on my MacBook and did not do anything other than a default install of the full MacTeX release: % find /usr/local -name blkarray.sty /usr/local/texlive/2025/texmf-dist/tex/latex/blkarray/blkarray.sty As Peter notes, I suspect that this is an issue on CRAN and would defer to Simon's interaction here. Also, as an FYI to Peter, I note below from the file path that you have TeX Live 2024 installed. The distributions are updated annually, and 2025 was released this past spring (March/April time frame). I do not believe that a prior year distribution is maintained for updates once the current year distribution is released, even though you can have multiple annual releases installed in parallel. Regards, Marc
On Dec 3, 2025, at 8:20?AM, Peter Dalgaard <pdalgd at gmail.com> wrote: Hi Ben, For whatever is is worth, I do have (on an M4) % find /usr/local -name blkarray.sty /usr/local/texlive/2024/texmf-dist/tex/latex/blkarray/blkarray.sty and I don't recall doing anything special to get it. So yes, most likely there's a glitch in the TeX install on the macos-arm64 builder. -pd
On 3 Dec 2025, at 01.10, Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com> wrote: I'm not a regular reader of r-sig-mac, but have a question about CRAN LaTeX infrastructure for MacOS. This may be a question specifically for Simon Urbanek, but thought I'd check here first in case anyone has insights. I recently sent a new version of the lme4 package (1.1-38) to CRAN; it passed all the incoming tests, but I'm now seeing warnings (at https://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_results_lme4.html) from the r-release-macos-arm64 and r-oldrel-macos-arm64 (but *not* from the x86_64 platforms):
! LaTeX Error: File `blkarray.sty' not found.
This hasn't happened before. Furthermore, when I go back in the git log for the package I see: commit 3140cc0f1b394c6888d7704ee3d5de5f45df2886 Author: Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com> Date: Thu Aug 10 10:28:55 2017 -0400 .Rbuildignore blkarray.sty as per CRAN request In particular, Kurt Hornik sent a mass e-mail in 2017 to many package maintainers saying:
These [packages] contain copies of standard LaTeX .sty files which should be excluded from the package (as shipping these copies should not be necessary, and may even cause trouble in case the local copies become outdated [as just happened for a recent CRAN submission]).
So my best guess is that this is an oversight/platform glitch on the arm64 platforms ... Thoughts? sincerely Ben Bolker
_______________________________________________ R-SIG-Mac mailing list R-SIG-Mac at r-project.org https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
-- Peter Dalgaard, Professor, Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark Phone: (+45)38153501 Office: A 4.23 Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
_______________________________________________ R-SIG-Mac mailing list R-SIG-Mac at r-project.org https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
Ben, it is not an oversight in that I'm not aware of any agreed set of optional packages. I'm also not aware of the discussion you quote from 2017, but if there is anything that you need that is not in the standard set then all you need to do is tell me that you require it. The change is that the most recent builds are now done on VMs that are now setup fully automatically (=no manual intervention) and use TinyTeX instead of MacTeX to make maintenance easier - FWIW see https://github.com/R-macos/vm-scripts-mini-r/blob/master/shared/setup.sh If you need any packages that are not a part of the standard TinyTeX bundle then you just need to tell me (or you can ask TinyTeX to include it so it is available to others as well). Cheers, Simon
On 3/12/2025, at 1:10 PM, Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com> wrote: I'm not a regular reader of r-sig-mac, but have a question about CRAN LaTeX infrastructure for MacOS. This may be a question specifically for Simon Urbanek, but thought I'd check here first in case anyone has insights. I recently sent a new version of the lme4 package (1.1-38) to CRAN; it passed all the incoming tests, but I'm now seeing warnings (at https://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_results_lme4.html) from the r-release-macos-arm64 and r-oldrel-macos-arm64 (but *not* from the x86_64 platforms):
! LaTeX Error: File `blkarray.sty' not found.
This hasn't happened before. Furthermore, when I go back in the git log for the package I see: commit 3140cc0f1b394c6888d7704ee3d5de5f45df2886 Author: Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com> Date: Thu Aug 10 10:28:55 2017 -0400 .Rbuildignore blkarray.sty as per CRAN request In particular, Kurt Hornik sent a mass e-mail in 2017 to many package maintainers saying:
These [packages] contain copies of standard LaTeX .sty files which should be excluded from the package (as shipping these copies should not be necessary, and may even cause trouble in case the local copies become outdated [as just happened for a recent CRAN submission]).
So my best guess is that this is an oversight/platform glitch on the arm64 platforms ... Thoughts? sincerely Ben Bolker
_______________________________________________ R-SIG-Mac mailing list R-SIG-Mac at r-project.org https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
OK, then this is my official request to include blkarray.sty in the set of available LaTeX style files on the arm64 platform ... (i.e. the blkarray LaTeX package, https://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/blkarray?lang=en ) This is the list of 'unnecessary' style files that were included in Kurt Hornik's 2017 e-mail to maintainers. I don't know if there's an easy way to diff against the set of files that TinyTeX provides ... a4wide.sty actuarialangle.sty actuarialsymbol.sty algorithm2e.sty algorithmic.sty amsmath.sty amssymb.sty authblk.sty blkarray.sty bm.sty chicago.sty enumitem.sty environ.sty fancyhdr.sty fancyheadings.sty fancyvrb.sty float.sty framed.sty fullpage.sty geometry.sty inconsolata.sty layout.sty longtable.sty natbib.sty nicefrac.sty placeins.sty relsize.sty shadethm.sty siunitx.sty srcltx.sty subfigure.sty svnkw.sty svn-multi.sty tabu.sty titleps.sty titlesec.sty titletoc.sty trimspaces.sty upquote.sty versions.sty zi4.sty I don't know if you should try to provide all these, or wait for tests to fail and fix things one package at a time ... cheers Ben Bolker
On 12/3/25 14:33, Simon Urbanek wrote:
Ben, it is not an oversight in that I'm not aware of any agreed set of optional packages. I'm also not aware of the discussion you quote from 2017, but if there is anything that you need that is not in the standard set then all you need to do is tell me that you require it. The change is that the most recent builds are now done on VMs that are now setup fully automatically (=no manual intervention) and use TinyTeX instead of MacTeX to make maintenance easier - FWIW see https://github.com/R-macos/vm-scripts-mini-r/blob/master/shared/setup.sh If you need any packages that are not a part of the standard TinyTeX bundle then you just need to tell me (or you can ask TinyTeX to include it so it is available to others as well). Cheers, Simon
On 3/12/2025, at 1:10 PM, Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com> wrote: I'm not a regular reader of r-sig-mac, but have a question about CRAN LaTeX infrastructure for MacOS. This may be a question specifically for Simon Urbanek, but thought I'd check here first in case anyone has insights. I recently sent a new version of the lme4 package (1.1-38) to CRAN; it passed all the incoming tests, but I'm now seeing warnings (at https://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_results_lme4.html) from the r-release-macos-arm64 and r-oldrel-macos-arm64 (but *not* from the x86_64 platforms):
! LaTeX Error: File `blkarray.sty' not found.
This hasn't happened before. Furthermore, when I go back in the git log for the package I see:
commit 3140cc0f1b394c6888d7704ee3d5de5f45df2886
Author: Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com>
Date: Thu Aug 10 10:28:55 2017 -0400
.Rbuildignore blkarray.sty as per CRAN request
In particular, Kurt Hornik sent a mass e-mail in 2017 to many package maintainers saying:
These [packages] contain copies of standard LaTeX .sty files which should be excluded from the package (as shipping these copies should not be necessary, and may even cause trouble in case the local copies become outdated [as just happened for a recent CRAN submission]).
So my best guess is that this is an oversight/platform glitch on the arm64 platforms ... Thoughts? sincerely Ben Bolker
_______________________________________________ R-SIG-Mac mailing list R-SIG-Mac at r-project.org https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
Dr. Benjamin Bolker Professor, Mathematics & Statistics and Biology, McMaster University Associate chair (graduate), Mathematics & Statistics Director, School of Computational Science and Engineering * E-mail is sent at my convenience; I don't expect replies outside of working hours.
Ben, thanks for the list! From those the following are missing from the standard TinyTex: == actuarialangle.sty == actuarialsymbol.sty == algorithm2e.sty == blkarray.sty == chicago.sty == relsize.sty == shadethm.sty == svnkw.sty == svn-multi.sty == versions.sty So I'll set that they are included one way or another. Thanks, Simon
On 4/12/2025, at 9:05 AM, Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com> wrote: OK, then this is my official request to include blkarray.sty in the set of available LaTeX style files on the arm64 platform ... (i.e. the blkarray LaTeX package, https://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/blkarray?lang=en ) This is the list of 'unnecessary' style files that were included in Kurt Hornik's 2017 e-mail to maintainers. I don't know if there's an easy way to diff against the set of files that TinyTeX provides ... a4wide.sty actuarialangle.sty actuarialsymbol.sty algorithm2e.sty algorithmic.sty amsmath.sty amssymb.sty authblk.sty blkarray.sty bm.sty chicago.sty enumitem.sty environ.sty fancyhdr.sty fancyheadings.sty fancyvrb.sty float.sty framed.sty fullpage.sty geometry.sty inconsolata.sty layout.sty longtable.sty natbib.sty nicefrac.sty placeins.sty relsize.sty shadethm.sty siunitx.sty srcltx.sty subfigure.sty svnkw.sty svn-multi.sty tabu.sty titleps.sty titlesec.sty titletoc.sty trimspaces.sty upquote.sty versions.sty zi4.sty I don't know if you should try to provide all these, or wait for tests to fail and fix things one package at a time ... cheers Ben Bolker On 12/3/25 14:33, Simon Urbanek wrote:
Ben, it is not an oversight in that I'm not aware of any agreed set of optional packages. I'm also not aware of the discussion you quote from 2017, but if there is anything that you need that is not in the standard set then all you need to do is tell me that you require it. The change is that the most recent builds are now done on VMs that are now setup fully automatically (=no manual intervention) and use TinyTeX instead of MacTeX to make maintenance easier - FWIW see https://github.com/R-macos/vm-scripts-mini-r/blob/master/shared/setup.sh If you need any packages that are not a part of the standard TinyTeX bundle then you just need to tell me (or you can ask TinyTeX to include it so it is available to others as well). Cheers, Simon
On 3/12/2025, at 1:10 PM, Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com> wrote: I'm not a regular reader of r-sig-mac, but have a question about CRAN LaTeX infrastructure for MacOS. This may be a question specifically for Simon Urbanek, but thought I'd check here first in case anyone has insights. I recently sent a new version of the lme4 package (1.1-38) to CRAN; it passed all the incoming tests, but I'm now seeing warnings (at https://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_results_lme4.html) from the r-release-macos-arm64 and r-oldrel-macos-arm64 (but *not* from the x86_64 platforms):
! LaTeX Error: File `blkarray.sty' not found.
This hasn't happened before. Furthermore, when I go back in the git log for the package I see: commit 3140cc0f1b394c6888d7704ee3d5de5f45df2886 Author: Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com> Date: Thu Aug 10 10:28:55 2017 -0400 .Rbuildignore blkarray.sty as per CRAN request In particular, Kurt Hornik sent a mass e-mail in 2017 to many package maintainers saying:
These [packages] contain copies of standard LaTeX .sty files which should be excluded from the package (as shipping these copies should not be necessary, and may even cause trouble in case the local copies become outdated [as just happened for a recent CRAN submission]).
So my best guess is that this is an oversight/platform glitch on the arm64 platforms ... Thoughts? sincerely Ben Bolker
_______________________________________________ R-SIG-Mac mailing list R-SIG-Mac at r-project.org https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
-- Dr. Benjamin Bolker Professor, Mathematics & Statistics and Biology, McMaster University Associate chair (graduate), Mathematics & Statistics Director, School of Computational Science and Engineering * E-mail is sent at my convenience; I don't expect replies outside of working hours.