[R-pkg-devel] Testing package on R-devel in a docker container

[Berwin A Turlach]

On Mon, 11 Aug 2025 08:47:45 -0400
Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan using gmail.com> wrote:

> Regarding Dirk's "narrower" comment:  I think that is really his
> decision about the docker container, not a property of R CMD check.
> R CMD check needs to be able to succeed if the only packages
> installed are the hard dependencies (Depends, Imports, plus base
> packages), but it doesn't actually install anything.  That's up to
> you before running it.

Obviously I cannot speak for Dirk and where his comment comes from :),
but WRE has since ages the following note:

	Note: R CMD check and R CMD build run R processes with
	--vanilla in which none of the user’s startup files are read.
	If you need R_LIBS set (to find packages in a non-standard
	library) you can set it in the environment: also you can use
	the check and build environment files (as specified by the
	environment variables R_CHECK_ENVIRON and R_BUILD_ENVIRON; if
	unset, files55 ~/.R/check.Renviron and ~/.R/build.Renviron are
	used) to set environment variables when using these utilities.

On my linux box I update and compile R patched and R devel regularly,
and at some point I got tired of also installing a lot of packages
(that I need for checking) each time.  So I moved all of these
additional packages to another library (where they are updated on an
as needed basis via update.packages(ask=FALSE, CheckBuilt=TRUE)). After
this restructure R patched and R devel could promptly not find those
packages anymore (until I changed my scripts to create appropriate
symbolic links, I did not want to go down the path of setting
environment variables).

Cheers,

	Berwin