Run R CMD check from R and Capture Results

Run R CMD check from R programmatically, and capture the results of the individual checks.

Runs R CMD check as an external command, and parses its output and returns the check failures.

rcmdcheck(
  path = ".",
  quiet = FALSE,
  args = character(),
  build_args = character(),
  check_dir = NULL,
  libpath = .libPaths(),
  repos = getOption("repos"),
  timeout = Inf,
  error_on = Sys.getenv("RCMDCHECK_ERROR_ON", c("never", "error", "warning",
    "note")[1]),
  env = character()
)

Arguments

path: Path to a package tarball or a directory.
quiet: Whether to print check output during checking.
args: Character vector of arguments to pass to R CMD check. Pass each argument as a single element of this character vector (do not use spaces to delimit arguments like you would in the shell). For example, to skip running of examples and tests, use args = c("--no-examples", "--no-tests") and not args = "--no-examples --no-tests". (Note that instead of the --output option you should use the check_dir argument, because --output cannot deal with spaces and other special characters on Windows.)
build_args: Character vector of arguments to pass to R CMD build. Pass each argument as a single element of this character vector (do not use spaces to delimit arguments like you would in the shell). For example, build_args = c("--force", "--keep-empty-dirs") is a correct usage and build_args = "--force --keep-empty-dirs" is incorrect.
check_dir: Path to a directory where the check is performed. If this is not NULL, then the a temporary directory is used, that is cleaned up when the returned object is garbage collected.
libpath: The library path to set for the check. The default uses the current library path.
repos: The repos option to set for the check. This is needed for cyclic dependency checks if you use the --as-cran argument. The default uses the current value.
timeout: Timeout for the check, in seconds, or as a base::difftime object. If it is not finished before this, it will be killed. Inf means no timeout. If the check is timed out, that is added as an extra error to the result object.
error_on: Whether to throw an error on R CMD check failures. Note that the check is always completed (unless a timeout happens), and the error is only thrown after completion. If "never", then no errors are thrown. If "error", then only ERROR failures generate errors. If "warning", then WARNING failures generate errors as well. If "note", then any check failure generated an error. Its default can be modified with the RCMDCHECK_ERROR_ON environment variable. If that is not set, then "never" is used.
env: A named character vector, extra environment variables to set in the check process.

Value

An S3 object (list) with fields errors, warnings and notes. These are all character vectors containing the output for the failed check.

Details

See rcmdcheck_process if you need to run R CMD check in a background process.

Turning off package checks

Sometimes it is useful to programmatically turn off some checks that may report check NOTEs. rcmdcehck provides two ways to do this.

First, you may declare in DESCRIPTION that you don't want to see NOTEs that are accepted on CRAN, with this entry:

Config/rcmdcheck/ignore-inconsequential-notes: true

Currently, this will make rcmdcheck ignore the following notes:

report large package sizes (_R_CHECK_PKG_SIZES_ = FALSE),
check cross-references in Rd files (_R_CHECK_RD_XREFS_ = FALSE),
NOTE if package requires GNU make (_R_CHECK_CRAN_INCOMING_NOTE_GNU_MAKE_ = FALSE),
report marked non-ASCII strings in datasets (_R_CHECK_PACKAGE_DATASETS_SUPPRESS_NOTES_ = TRUE).

The second way is more flexible, and lets you turn off individual checks via setting environment variables. You may provide a tools/check.env environment file in your package with the list of environment variable settings that rcmdcheck will automatically use when checking the package. See Startup for the format of this file.

Here is an example tools/check.env file:

# Report if package size is larger than 10 megabytes
_R_CHECK_PKG_SIZES_THRESHOLD_=10

# Do not check Rd cross references
_R_CHECK_RD_XREFS_=false

# Do not report if package requires GNU make
_R_CHECK_CRAN_INCOMING_NOTE_GNU_MAKE_=false

# Do not check non-ASCII strings in datasets
_R_CHECK_PACKAGE_DATASETS_SUPPRESS_NOTES_=true

See the "R internals" manual and the R source code for the environment variables that control the checks.

Note that Config/rcmdcheck/ignore-inconsequential-notes and the check.env file are only supported by rcmdcheck, and running R CMD check from a shell (or GUI) will not use them.