[R-pkg-devel] Drafting vignettes that require DB connection

[Pepijn de Vries]

You can also pre-render your vignette on your local machine, where you have access to the database. Downside is that you cannot automate this, so you will have to render again when you update your package. See: https://ropensci.org/blog/2019/12/08/precompute-vignettes/#the-solution-locally-knitting-rmarkdown

Pepijn

________________________________________
Van: R-package-devel <r-package-devel-bounces using r-project.org> namens Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan using gmail.com>
Verzonden: maandag 18 augustus 2025 16:55
Aan: Hüsing, Johannes <Johannes.Huesing using krebsregister.nrw.de>; r-package-devel using r-project.org <r-package-devel using r-project.org>
Onderwerp: Re: [R-pkg-devel] Drafting vignettes that require DB connection
 
Presumably when your code tries to open the database, it will fail with
an error.  What you should do is catch that error so the vignette
doesn't fail, and print a message to the user explaining why things
didn't work.

If you are using knitr, you can call `knitr::knit_exit()`
and it will quit at that point without appearing to fail.

Duncan Murdoch

On 2025-08-18 9:06 a.m., Hüsing, Johannes via R-package-devel wrote:
> Disclaimer: I am building a package for local usage (for now), which will probably be not submitted to CRAN. If you view this posting as off topic, please say so or ignore.
>
> In a vignette like this one https://rdrr.io/cran/DBI/f/vignettes/DBI-advanced.Rmd, code is introduced that, on invocation, would try to establish a DB connection which probably would not exist on someone else's than the maintainer's configuration. Would the maintainer expect the user of the package to tweak her local configuration, or rather vignette script, to make the code run? The R packages book reads:
>
> Note that since you build vignettes locally, CRAN only receives the html/pdf and the source code. However, CRAN does not re-build the vignette. It only checks that the code is runnable (by running it).
>
> What happens when running the script on the user's configuration if the DB handle does not exist? Or indeed, when CRAN runs the code and no DB is built by running the code?
>
> This posting https://forum.posit.co/t/vignettes-that-require-locally-stored-data/2392 seems to come close to my question.
>
> Best
>
> Johannes
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