[R-pkg-devel] pandoc version used in winbuilder

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 26/06/2019 2:54 p.m., Lenth, Russell V wrote:
> All,
> 
> How does one tell what version of pandoc is being used by winbuilder (and probably other related CRAN-submission processes)?

The function rmarkdown::pandoc_version() will tell you.
> 
> I have a package with several HTML vignettes, for which I use a custom style. I had decided to add the pandoc option '-strip-comments' to my script (my vignettes have quite a few HTML comments that are used for indexing and are not needed after the vignettes are built). When I built the package and submitted it for checking to winbuilder (for the development version of R), the result was that each vignette failed to rebuild, with a message that pandoc.exe has no option -strip-comments. However, that option has been available since pandoc version 2.0; and its latest version is 2.7.3.
> 
> This is not a big deal for my package, so I just removed that option and then all was OK. But still, why are we having to rely on a relatively ancient version of pandoc?

It takes work to install a new version, and presumably nobody has done 
that work.  Pandoc is not easy to build, so some CRAN machines don't 
have it at all.

Your DESCRIPTION file should list it in SystemRequirements with the 
required version number.  I'd suggest using a reasonably low number if 
you want CRAN to accept and build your package.

Duncan Murdoch