There's also a more-recent, related discussion titled 'Bug 18186: ignore broken symlinks in R CMD build #49' at <https://github.com/r-devel/r-dev-day/issues/49>, with useful comments.
/Henrik On Mon, May 18, 2026 at 12:06 PM Tim Taylor <[email protected]> wrote: > > For completeness here’s the thread I recalled > > https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2024-August/083610.html > > Tim > > > On 18 May 2026, at 19:46, Tim Taylor <[email protected]> > > wrote: > > > > > > Hi Ben > > > > I think this was discussed recently on one of the lists (although that may > > be a figment of my imagination). Either way, for info, there is more > > related discussion over in https://bugs.r-project.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17549. > > > > Tim > > > >>> On 18 May 2026, at 19:36, Ben Bolker <[email protected]> wrote: > >>> > >> As currently implemented, R CMD build copies everything in the package > >> directory to a working directory, then unlinks those in .Rbuildignore (see > >> this comment by Jim Hester from 2018). > >> > >> https://github.com/r-lib/rcmdcheck/issues/90#issuecomment-435938362 > >> > >> If one accidentally happens :-( to create a directory with many gigabytes > >> of junk in it, say from reverse-dependency-checking a widely used package, > >> then the presence of that directory (even if .Rbuildignore'd) will make R > >> CMD build hang as it tries to copy the contents of the directory ... > >> > >> I realize it's considerably more complicated to skip .Rbuildignore'd > >> files in the process of copying (I don't see offhand how to do it without > >> some fairly fancy unix-`find`-like tool, as opposed to a straight-up > >> `file.copy(..., recursive = TRUE)`, but I wonder if there's any appetite > >> for changing this behaviour? > >> > >> cheers > >> Ben Bolker > >> > >> ______________________________________________ > >> [email protected] mailing list > >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > [email protected] mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel ______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
