[R-pkg-devel] How to debug build-time dynamic documentation issues?

[Duncan Murdoch]

I'm not certain this will give you enough debug information, but you can 
run R CMD build in the current session using the internal function 
tools::.build_packages, e.g.

   R CMD build --no-manual testpkg

would be run as

   tools:::.build_packages(c("--no-manual", "testpkg"))

This removes one level of processes, but the tryCatch() and processes 
run within this function are still there, so it might not be sufficient 
for you.  In that case the only solution might be to add debugging code 
into R and recompile it.

The similar command for INSTALL is tools:::.install_packages.

Duncan Murdoch

On 12/08/2021 11:06 p.m., Pavel N. Krivitsky wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> TL;DR: Is there a way to get a full traceback and/or frame dump for
> errors that occur in build-time and install-time \Sexpr{} calls in R
> documentation files?
> 
> 
> # Context
> 
> I am working on a package (
> https://github.com/joycecheng/ergm/tree/ergm-term-index ) whose
> documentation includes a number of \Sexpr[stage=render]{} calls, and I
> am getting reports that some Windows users are not able to install the
> package because they get errors when the HTML indices are being built.
> 
> Complicating the matter is that this only seems to affect some Windows
> systems but not others.
> 
> Unfortunately, R's output is not very helpful in identifying the
> problem beyond the help file in which it had occurred and the terminal
> error message. For example, on those systems with R 4.1.0:
> 
> remotes::install_github("joycecheng/ergm using ergm-term-index")
> 
> gives (for those users):
> 
> [SNIP]
> ergmConstraint html
> Error: incorrect number of dimensions
> - removing
> 'C:/Users/[SNIP]/AppData/Local/Temp/RtmpURZYMP/Rinst1144e5a2698/ergm'
> -----------------------------------
> ERROR: package installation failed
> Error: Failed to install 'ergm' from GitHub:
> System command 'Rcmd.exe' failed, exit status: 1, stdout + stderr (last
> 10 lines):
> E> ergm.exact html
> E> ergm.geodistdist html
> E> ergm.getnetwork html
> E> ergm.godfather html
> E> ergm.mple html
> E> ergmConstraint html
> E> Error: incorrect number of dimensions
> E> * removing
> 'C:/Users/[SNIP]/AppData/Local/Temp/RtmpURZYMP/Rinst1144e5a2698/ergm'
> E> -----------------------------------
> E> ERROR: package installation failed
> 
> 
> # What I've tried so far
> 
>   * Running the code in the \Sexpr{} manually in an R session doesn't
>     reproduce the error: this seems to be a build/install-time issue.
>   * options(error=...) does the wrong thing, because the \Sexpr{} code
>     is run inside tryCatch(), so what gets traced and/or dumped is
>     catching code, not the original error.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Pavel
> 
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