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

[Kasper Daniel Hansen]

So to be super explicit, the thing you need to do on the command line to
check a package fully is
  R CMD build packageDirectory
  R CMD check packageDirectory_x.y.z.tar.gz
ie. always run it on a source tarball. You can run R CMD check directly on
packageDirectory, but it is not the same

Encapsulated in a Makefile, it looks something like this

base_minfi: minfi
ifneq (,$(wildcard minfi/DESCRIPTION))
minfi_VERSION:=$(shell grep ^Version minfi/DESCRIPTION | sed 's_Version:
__')
endif



On Tue, Nov 18, 2025 at 5:37 AM Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan using gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
>
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>


-- 
Best,
Kasper

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