[Rd] Testing R build when using --without-recommended-packages?

[Henrik Bengtsson]

I'm on Linux (Ubuntu 18.04). How do I check an R build when using
--without-recommended-packages? 'make check' assumes 'recommended'
packages are installed, so that fails without them available.

DETAILS:

When I build R from source without 'recommended' packages:

curl -O https://cran.r-project.org/src/base-prerelease/R-latest.tar.gz
tar xvfz R-latest.tar.gz
cd R-beta
./configure --enable-memory-profiling --enable-R-shlib --prefix="$PREFIX"
make

I cannot figure out how to validate the build.  Following Section
'Installation' of 'R Installation and Administration', I run:

make check

results in:

Testing examples for package ‘stats’
Error: testing 'stats' failed
Execution halted

This is because those tests assume 'MASS' is installed;

$ cat /path/to/tests/Examples/stats-Ex.Rout.fail

> utils::data(muscle, package = "MASS")
Error in find.package(package, lib.loc, verbose = verbose) :
  there is no package called ‘MASS’
Calls: <Anonymous> -> find.package
Execution halted

BTW, isn't this a bug? Shouldn't this example run conditionally on
'MASS' being installed, because 'MASS' is a suggested package here;

Package: stats
Version: 4.1.0
...
Imports: utils, grDevices, graphics
Suggests: MASS, Matrix, SuppDists, methods, stats4

/Henrik