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

[John Fox]

Dear Ben,

On 2020-10-07 5:26 p.m., Ben Bolker wrote:
>    I hope so too. The (annoying) workaround is to compact the vignette 
> yourself (using qpdf directly or using tools::compactPDF), then use 
> no-build-vignettes.  The problem there is whatever's supposed to happen 
> with building vignette indices.  The uuuuugly workaround, I guess, is to 
> build the tarball, compact the vignettes oneself, then *replace* them in 
> the tarball.  (Obviously I can automate that, but it seems as though it 
> would be unnecessary if I knew what was going on ...)

I've used both of these workarounds and agree that it would be nice to 
avoid them. After all, what is the --compact-vignettes argument for?

Best,
  John

> 
>    cheers
>     Ben
> 
> 
> On 10/7/20 4:10 PM, John Fox wrote:
>> 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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