[R] rdb and rds files include abolute file paths / help understanding how lazy-load dbs are created

[Philip Rinn]

Hi,

I'm trying to understand why/how absolute file paths are stored in .rdb[1] and
.rds[2] files during package installation. As a consequence building the same r
package in different directories does not produce identical .rdb and .rds files.

The background is that I work on reproducible builds[3] of R packages. I think
this is important from an engineering point of view but also from a scientists
perspective (that's actually my point). I want to be sure that my research results
are reproducible and therefore I need software that builds reproducible.

To investigate further I'd like to ask for some help. From what I understand so
far the lazy-load databases are built by code in
src/library/tools/R/makeLazyLoad.R. The code path is not very clear to me but the
main problem I have now is that it's hard to follow the code path used to install
a package. Could someone enlighten me by pointing me to some docs or by briefly
describing the path?

Any help/comments are very welcome.

Best,
Philip

PS: could you CC me, I'm not on the list. Thanks.

[1] at least in <PKG>/R/<PKG>.rdb and <PKG>/help/<PKG>.rdb
[2] at least in <PKG>/help/paths.rds
[3] https://reproducible-builds.org