R CMD CHECK --as-cran failing on OS X Catalina

Question

I am building a new R package on an iMac w/ Catalina. I have installed the latest XCode and XQuartz. My new package builds fine, ie

R CMD BUILD conicFit

runs without error. Then I tried

R CMD CHECK  --as-cran conicFit 

and get this error:

* using log directory ‘/Users/cgw/Rgames/fitConic.Rcheck’
* using R version 4.0.0 (2020-04-24)
* using platform: x86_64-apple-darwin17.0 (64-bit)
* using session charset: UTF-8
* using option ‘--as-cran’
* checking for file ‘fitConic/DESCRIPTION’ ... OK
* this is package ‘fitConic’ version ‘1.0’
* checking CRAN incoming feasibility ...Error:  file './DESCRIPTION' does not exist
Execution halted 

If I run without the --as-cran flag, the check passes with no errors or warnings. What's even more frustrating is that I can re-run older packages and do not get this error, which suggests that the actual error is something other than not finding "./DESCRIPTION".

Any ideas as what to test, or what to reinstall, etc.?

Answer 1

It appears that a subtle change in the way R CMD CHECK works under R 4.X caused commands that previously worked to fail. The solution is to specify the tarball, ie

R CMD CHECK --as-cran fitConic.tar.gz  

runs the detailed code check to completion.