Disable building PDF in an R CMD check

Question

I'm running tests for an R package on a build server that doesn't have LaTeX installed, so I'm trying to disable manual creation.

My build command looks like:

R CMD build --no-manual --no-build-vignettes src/R/pkgname
R CMD check --no-manual --no-vignettes --no-build-vignettes  pkgname_1.0.tar.gz

And yet I see this error:

* checking PDF version of manual ... WARNING
LaTeX errors when creating PDF version.
This typically indicates Rd problems.
* checking PDF version of manual without hyperrefs or index ... ERROR
Re-running with no redirection of stdout/stderr.
Hmm ... looks like a package
Error in texi2dvi(file = file, pdf = TRUE, clean = clean, quiet = quiet,  : 
  pdflatex is not available
Error in texi2dvi(file = file, pdf = TRUE, clean = clean, quiet = quiet,  : 
  pdflatex is not available
Error in running tools::texi2pdf()
You may want to clean up by 'rm -Rf /tmp/Rtmp17Rvhk/Rd2pdf25c661003cc9'
* DONE

How can I ask the build process to not check the manual besides --no-manual and --no-build-vignettes?

Answer 1

I do that all time both directly and on Travis. You may have the options slightly wrong (they changed once or twice). Which R are you running?

With R 4.0.0, try

R CMD build --no-manual --no-build-vignettes 

and

R CMD check --no-manual --no-vignettes  tarBallFromPreviousStep

See e.g. this travis.yml file (especially lines 26 and 27) and e.g. this most recent run from it.