Verbose output for R package building

Question

I am trying to compile a package using:

devtools::build()

At some point C/C++ compilation errors crop up; however, I'm having difficulty debugging them because I don't know what command was used to compile them. Is there a way to get the build commands to generate verbose output similar to make or ninja -v where each file's compilation command is listed?

Answer 1

If you use R CMD INSTALL at the command line, you'll see all the commands and compile errors.

I wouldn't expect devtools::build to be compiling source, unless you've specified binary = TRUE . You'd use devtools::install for that, and it includes the argument quiet , which defaults to TRUE : so set it to FALSE and you should see the compile steps.