[R-pkg-devel] Macros in Rd files --- supplementary question.

[Rolf Turner]

On 10/11/17 09:29, Rolf Turner wrote:

> On 09/11/17 23:40, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>> On 09/11/2017 5:06 AM, Uwe Ligges wrote:
>>> Note the % may be a comment?
>>>
>>
>> Yes, and the body should be written in Rd markup, not R.  Working out 
>> the appropriate number of escapes is painful; I recommend trial and 
>> error.
>>
>> This worked for me:
>>
>>   \newcommand{\today}{\Sexpr{format(Sys.Date(),"\\\%d/\\\%m/\\\%Y")}}
> 
> Did that, and it worked like a charm.  However when I do the "R CMD 
> build" thing, when it comes to the "* building the PDF package manual"
> step it says "Hmm ... looks like a package" (no shit, Sherlock!) and 
> emits a huge amount of verbose LaTeX diagnostics.
> 
> "Normally" one just gets the line "* building the PDF package manual"
> and nothing else, and "R CMD build" just carries on cruising.
> 
> Evidently defining a macro in the *.Rd file triggers the extra elaboration.
> 
> It's no big deal of course, but I just thought I'd ask:
> 
> (a) Is there anything to worry about in this respect?
> 
> (b) Is there anything different that I should be doing?
> 
> (c) Is there anyway of suppressing the (ever-so-slightly annoying)
> extra screen output?
> 
> I guess that's really three supplementary questions ....

Following up a suggestion that I got from Adrian Baddeley I did

    R CMD build --help

(I guess this is a case of RTFM) and I got:


> Usage: R CMD build [options] pkgdirs
>
> Build R packages from package sources in the directories specified by
> ‘pkgdirs’
>
> Options:
>   -h, --help        print short help message and exit
>   -v, --version        print version info and exit
>
>   --force               force removal of INDEX file
>   --keep-empty-dirs     do not remove empty dirs
>   --no-build-vignettes  do not (re)build package vignettes
>   --no-manual           do not build the PDF manual even if \Sexprs are present
> ...
> ...
> ... 


So:  What's triggering the building of the manual is the presence of 
\Sexpr in my macro, and I can suppress this and get rid of all the 
unwanted LaTeX bumff by using the --no-manual flag.

I must say that I don't see why the presence of a \Sexpr (WTF ever that 
is) should trigger the building of the manual.

May I humbly suggest to R Core that this behaviour be modified; perhaps 
there could be a --manual flag asking that the manual be built (whether 
or not there are \Sexpr expressions in the *.Rd files).

cheers,

Rolf

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