[R-pkg-devel] dateset with roxygen2?

[Spencer Graves]

Diego Hernangómez Herrero identified my problem:


My .Rbuildignore file in the package root directory contained 
'MaddisonCountries.rda'. I thought that entry in .Rbuildignore would 
apply only to the a copy in the package root directory and would not 
affect the copy in data. Clearly I was wrong.


The code in my vignette only generates that file when there's an 
appropriately named *.xlsx file in inst/exdata. Both the *.xlsx and 
*.rda files are in .gitignore and so are not on GitHub. That trick means 
that the vignette does not write anything on standard checks on GitHub, 
CRAN, etc.


I can accomplish the same thing without this problem and still have the 
vignette work as intended by writing the new data file with a different 
name. The file would then have to be renamed before replacing the old 
file in data/ with the new.


Thanks again to Diego Hernangómez Herrero and thanks to all others who 
spent time looking at this and thinking about it.


Sincerely,
Spencer Graves


On 9/24/25 19:01, Spencer Graves wrote:
> Hi, John:
> 
> 
> On 9/24/25 16:27, John Benninghoff wrote:
>> Hi Spencer, I tried downloading your GitHub repo. I wasn’t able to 
>> replicate your R CMD check results. I did find issues with the 
>> DESCRIPTION file, which I fixed by removing the blank “Imports” and 
>> running desc::desc_normalize(). After that, running 
>> rcmdcheck::rcmdcheck() returned 0 errors, warnings, and notes.
> 
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> 
> I got what you got with "rcmdcheck::rcmdcheck()".
> 
> 
> Sadly, GitHub Actions still reported the previous warning after I 
> committed the change you suggested to DESCRIPTION AND locally using the 
> process I found recommended in "R Projects":
> 
> 
> library(devtools)
> document() # add
> load_all()
> check()
> 
> 
> I'm currently trying to develop a toy package using roxygen2:
> 
> 
> https://github.com/sbgraves237/roxygenData1
> 
> 
> This toy package currently consists only of boilerplate with zero content.
> 
> 
> Thanks for your help. roxygen2 sounds great, but it cannot be used if a 
> problem like this cannot be fixed with a finite amount of effort ;-)
> 
> 
> Spencer
> 
>>
>>> On Sep 24, 2025, at 3:32 PM, Spencer Graves 
>>> <spencer.graves using effectivedefense.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi, Michael et al.:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 9/24/25 11:59, Michael Chirico wrote:
>>>> {ggplot2} has a number of data sets, you might read over their sources:
>>>> https://github.com/tidyverse/ggplot2/blob/main/R/data.R <https:// 
>>>> github.com/tidyverse/ggplot2/blob/main/R/data.R>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks. I don't see anything there that is different from the example 
>>> in their book, which is extracted from the similar data.R file in 
>>> their tidyr package, which I reviewed earlier.[2]
>>>
>>>
>>> I've deleted virtually everything else in that package and still get 
>>> that same error.
>>>
>>>
>>> Suggestions?
>>> Spencer Graves
>>>
>>>
>>> p.s. I've done several web searches on this issue, found discussions 
>>> on StackOverflow that may have worked a few years ago, but roxygen2 
>>> seems to have changes since then. I posted a similar question to 
>>> StackOverflow, that generated a few comments but nothing that seemed 
>>> to fix this problem. I reported an "issue" to the R Packages book on 
>>> GitHub last week, so far with nothing:
>>>
>>>
>>> https://github.com/hadley/r-pkgs/issues/1106
>>>
>>>
>>> I tried to use roxygen2 with a different project a year ago and gave 
>>> up after being unable to figure out how to use it. >
>>>> On Wed, Sep 24, 2025 at 5:48 AM Spencer Graves 
>>>> <spencer.graves using effectivedefense.org 
>>>> <mailto:spencer.graves using effectivedefense.org>> wrote:
>>>>     Hello, All:
>>>>     How does one document a dataset with roxygen2?
>>>>     I've recently read Wickham and Bryan, R Packages (2e).[1] I've 
>>>> tried to
>>>>     do what they say there, and R CMD check is reporting:
>>>>        Variables with usage in Rd file 'MaddisonCountries.Rd' but 
>>>> not in
>>>>     code:
>>>>           ‘MaddisonCountries’
>>>>     This is in "https://github.com/sbgraves237/SS4Maddison <https://
>>>>     github.com/sbgraves237/SS4Maddison>".
>>>>     Suggestions? Thanks, Spencer Graves
>>>>     p.s. Wickham and Bryan Section 7.1.2 says, "Objects in data/ are 
>>>> always
>>>>     effectively exported .... . This means that they must be
>>>>     documented. ...
>>>>     [Y]ou document the name of the dataset and save it in R/. For 
>>>> example,
>>>>     the roxygen2 block used to document the who data in tidyr is 
>>>> saved in
>>>>     R/data.R ... . There are two roxygen tags that are especially 
>>>> important
>>>>     for documenting datasets: @format ... @source
>>>>     They give an example of a "who" dataset in tidyr. I've studied that
>>>>     example without finding what I'm doing wrong.[2]
>>>>     In addition, I need to specify Roygen and "LazyData: true" in
>>>>     DESCRIPTION.
>>>>     [1] Wickham and Bryan, R Packages online at:
>>>>     https://r-pkgs.org/ <https://r-pkgs.org/>
>>>>     Chapter 7 deals with Data:
>>>>     https://r-pkgs.org/data.html <https://r-pkgs.org/data.html>
>>>>     [2] "data.R" in tidyr is available at:
>>>>     https://github.com/tidyverse/tidyr/blob/main/R/data.R <https://
>>>>     github.com/tidyverse/tidyr/blob/main/R/data.R>
>>>>     ______________________________________________
>>>>     R-package-devel using r-project.org <mailto:R-package-devel using r- 
>>>> project.org>
>>>>     mailing list
>>>>     https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel <https://
>>>>     stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel>
>>>>
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-package-devel using r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
>>
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-package-devel using r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel