[R-pkg-devel] is R CMD build --compact-vignettes working as expected?

[John Fox]

Dear Ben,

I was hoping that someone would pick up on this problem, because I've 
experienced the same issue of --compact-vignettes apparently ignored, 
e.g., with the Rcmdr package under R 4.0.2 on both macOS and Windows.

Best,
  John

John Fox, Professor Emeritus
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
web: https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/jfox/

On 2020-10-05 1:09 p.m., Ben Bolker wrote:
>    Am I confused, or doing something wrong, or ... ?
> 
>    I have qpdf installed, and am running R CMD build with 
> --compact-vignettes, but the PDF in the tarball doesn't seem to be 
> compressed despite the fact that the output messages say "compacting 
> vignettes ..."
> 
> 
>    $ R CMD build --compact-vignettes lme4
> * checking for file ‘lme4/DESCRIPTION’ ... OK
> * preparing ‘lme4’:
> * checking DESCRIPTION meta-information ... OK
> * cleaning src
> * installing the package to process help pages
> * saving partial Rd database
> * creating vignettes ... OK
> Warning: ‘inst/doc’ files
>      ‘lmerperf.html’, ‘lmer.pdf’, ‘PLSvGLS.pdf’, ‘Theory.pdf’
>    ignored as vignettes have been rebuilt.
>    Run R CMD build with --no-build-vignettes to prevent rebuilding.
> * compacting vignettes and other PDF files
> * cleaning src
> * checking for LF line-endings in source and make files and shell scripts
> * checking for empty or unneeded directories
> * building ‘lme4_1.1-24.tar.gz’
> 
>    The copy of lmer.pdf in the resulting tarball is 900K or so:
> 
> $ tar ztvf lme4_1.1-24.tar.gz lme4/inst/doc/lmer.pdf
> -rw-r--r-- bolker/bolker 907022 2020-10-05 12:59 lme4/inst/doc/lmer.pdf
> 
>    The previously built (and manually compacted) version of lmer.pdf in 
> the tarball is 500K:
> 
> $ ls -l lme4/inst/doc/lmer.pdf
> -rw-r--r-- 1 bolker bolker 495199 Oct  3 22:15 lme4/inst/doc/lmer.pdf
> 
>     Is 'R CMD build' confused by the presence of a pre-built PDF in the 
> inst/doc directory? Or am I somehow mistaken about how this is supposed 
> to work?
> 
>     I would just use --no-build-vignettes and submit the tarball with 
> the previously built/compressed PDF, but I'm trying to avoid a
> "Package has a VignetteBuilder field but no prebuilt vignette index" 
> NOTE, which I assume is missing because I built without building 
> vignettes ... ?
> 
>    As always, enlightenment is welcome.
> 
>    cheers
>      Ben Bolker
> 
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