R install.package fails on data-raw file not found

Question

I am building an R package, with some associated data. I have created a data-raw folder using usethis:: functions, put various txt fies there, and built out R code to generate the.rda/Rdata files. I have used the use_data() function to generate the.rda and Rdata files and these I can see in /data.

I can retrieve these objects using load_all().

I then build a source package, which generates a compressed-tar-ball.

Finally I attempt to install that tar-ball/package in another project and get:

 devtools::install_local("/home/fred/Rprojects/evidently/evidently_0.0.2.1.tar.gz")
✓  checking for file ‘/tmp/Rtmp53yb8S/remotes2eaf7a4fc2cb/evidently/DESCRIPTION’ ...
─  preparing ‘evidently’:
✓  checking DESCRIPTION meta-information
─  checking for LF line-endings in source and make files and shell scripts
─  checking for empty or unneeded directories
─  building ‘evidently_0.0.2.1.tar.gz’
   
Installing package into ‘/home/rob/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/4.0’
    (as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
    * installing *source* package ‘evidently’ ...
    ** using staged installation
    ** R
    ** data
    *** moving datasets to lazyload DB
    ** byte-compile and prepare package for lazy loading
    Error : **'/tmp/Rtmp0PbObQ/R.INSTALL391126f5cc7c/evidently/data-raw/TPBULET-A.txt' does not exist.**
    Error: unable to load R code in package ‘evidently’
    Execution halted
    ERROR: lazy loading failed for package ‘evidently’
    * removing ‘/home/fred/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/4.0/evidently’
    * restoring previous ‘/home/rob/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/4.0/evidently’
    Error: Failed to install 'evidently' from local:
      (converted from warning) installation of package ‘/tmp/Rtmp53yb8S/file2eaf5f6ca68c/evidently_0.0.2.1.tar.gz’ had non-zero exit status
    > 

But the file it says it is looking for is in data-raw in the package folder.

I am missing something obvious here. I would welcome suggestions on why the system is not seeing the txt file, and why it is therefore aborting the install.

Answer 1

This happens when you have a rogue link to the data-raw file, in a file you thought you had purged, and when it gets loaded as part of install-packages, it tries to find a file in data-raw/ that is not there in the package, because data-raw/ is not part of the package, just in the source code. So, search your files and find the forgotten bit of code. Hang head in shame.