[Rd] Apply .Rbuildignore before copying files in R CMD build

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 2024-08-28 5:59 p.m., Alexey Sergushichev wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Is there any reason why .Rbuildignore is not used before copying package
> files in R CMD build?
> 
> For some of the packages I develop I have rather large directories with
> miscellaneous files for testing and other purposes. They are in my
> .Rbuildignore (and .gitignore) file, but that doesn't prevent R CMD build
> from trying to copy them on the build process. Having them copied either
> breaks the build completely because /tmp directory gets out of space, or
> just slows it down a lot. So I wonder if there is a specific reason for
> this behavior and whether it could be change or controlled by some
> parameter.
> 
> There is some discussion in the context of pkgbuild package:
> https://github.com/r-lib/pkgbuild/issues/59 It provides a hackish
> workaround for that, which also does not work on Windows.

I think the reason is simplicity.  The build process can add, delete or 
modify files.  You wouldn't want that to happen on the original source 
files, so R copies the files to a temporary location to run things.

If it applied .Rbuildignore first, then important files for the build 
might not be available, and the build could fail.

Having an R package that needs so much data that you can't fit two 
copies of it on your disk is a really unusual situation.  I think it 
will have to be up to you to fix it (by increasing your temp space, or 
decreasing the size of some of those files, or something else).

Duncan Murdoch