R devel - May 2021 - Testing R build when using --without-recommended-packages?

I'm on Linux (Ubuntu 18.04). How do I check an R build when using
--without-recommended-packages? 'make check' assumes
'recommended'
packages are installed, so that fails without them available.

DETAILS:

When I build R from source without 'recommended' packages:

curl -O https://cran.r-project.org/src/base-prerelease/R-latest.tar.gz
tar xvfz R-latest.tar.gz
cd R-beta
./configure --enable-memory-profiling --enable-R-shlib
--prefix="$PREFIX"
make

I cannot figure out how to validate the build.  Following Section
'Installation' of 'R Installation and Administration', I run:

make check

results in:

Testing examples for package ?stats?
Error: testing 'stats' failed
Execution halted

This is because those tests assume 'MASS' is installed;

$ cat /path/to/tests/Examples/stats-Ex.Rout.fail
> utils::data(muscle, package = "MASS")
Error in find.package(package, lib.loc, verbose = verbose) :
  there is no package called ?MASS?
Calls: <Anonymous> -> find.package
Execution halted

BTW, isn't this a bug? Shouldn't this example run conditionally on
'MASS' being installed, because 'MASS' is a suggested package
here;

Package: stats
Version: 4.1.0
...
Imports: utils, grDevices, graphics
Suggests: MASS, Matrix, SuppDists, methods, stats4

/Henrik

On 4 May 2021 at 09:31, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
| I'm on Linux (Ubuntu 18.04). How do I check an R build when using
| --without-recommended-packages? 'make check' assumes
'recommended'
| packages are installed, so that fails without them available.

[...]

| BTW, isn't this a bug? Shouldn't this example run conditionally on
| 'MASS' being installed, because 'MASS' is a suggested package
here;

The 'R-admin' manual in Section 1.2 "Getting patched and
development
versions" ends on 

  If downloading manually from CRAN, do ensure that you have the correct
  versions of the recommended packages: if the number in the file VERSION
  is ?x.y.z? you need to download the contents of
  ?https://CRAN.R-project.org/src/contrib/dir?, where dir is
  ?x.y.z/Recommended? for r-devel or x.y-patched/Recommended for r-patched,
  respectively, to directory src/library/Recommended in the sources you
  have unpacked. After downloading manually you need to execute
  tools/link-recommended from the top level of the sources to make the
  requisite links in src/library/Recommended. A suitable incantation from
  the top level of the R sources using wget might be (for the correct
  value of dir)

      wget -r -l1 --no-parent -A\*.gz -nd -P src/library/Recommended \
        https://CRAN.R-project.org/src/contrib/dir
      ./tools/link-recommended

Dirk

-- 
https://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org