R devel - May 2026 - copy-before-ignore in R CMD build

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 <bbolker at gmail.com> 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
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
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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 <tim.taylor at
hiddenelephants.co.uk> 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 <bbolker at gmail.com>
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
>> 
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
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