[R-pkg-devel] Fwd: Authors maybe from R: R CMD check . fail

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 2025-11-17 9:24 p.m., Julian Grimm wrote:
> Hello together,
> 
> I have a question regarding the Authors using R field.
> When I run R CMD check . in a package either created by myself with
> pkgKitten::kitten, usethis::create_package or even on existing packages on
> Cran (e.g. the validate package),
> I get the following error:
> 
> * checking for file ‘./DESCRIPTION’ ... ERROR
> Required fields missing or empty:
>    ‘Author’ ‘Maintainer’
> * DONE
> 
> The corresponding line in the DESCRIPTION file is:
> 
> Authors using R: person("Your", "Name", role = c("aut", "cre"),
>         email = "your using email.com")
> 
> and Authors using R:
>      person("First", "Last", , "first.last using example.com", role = c("aut",
> "cre"))
> 
> for pkgKitten and usethis respectively.
> 
> Why does this error occur?

You haven't built the package.  Some checks only succeed on a built copy 
of a package, i.e. the *.tar.gz file.  The devtools::check() function 
will do both the build and test.

Part of building the package modifies the DESCRIPTION file to insert the 
Author and Maintainer fields.  Another important difference is that 
.Rbuildignore is processed, so you won't get warnings about files that 
shouldn't be there, or false success if you accidentally specify 
ignoring a file that should be kept.

Duncan Murdoch