[Linting Rule] Description Metadata

Generated from 'wiki-linter.ts' on 2026-10-25, 09:29:25 UTC (v2.16.6), do not edit directly.

Description Metadata ^[overview]

This rule ports the following steps of R CMD check (see the conformance table for the legend):

#	Step	Coverage	Note
1	for file 'DESCRIPTION' (book)	🟩⭐	⭐ also reports every problem instead of stopping at the first
6	package bundle (book)	🔶
25	DESCRIPTION meta-information (book)	🟩
26	CRAN incoming feasibility (book)	🔶	the DESCRIPTION based notes, repository queries are left out
27	package dependencies (book)	🔷	availability and versions asked of the signature database instead of the repositories

This rule is a best-effort rule.

Finds problems in the DESCRIPTION: required fields, package name, version, maintainer, dependency fields, license, Authors@R, encoding, and the Title and Description style CRAN asks for.
This linting rule is implemented in src/linter/rules/cmd-check/description-metadata.ts.

Configuration

Linting rules can be configured by passing a configuration object to the linter query as shown in the example below. The description-metadata rule accepts the following configuration options:

• cranIncoming
  also run the style checks R CMD check --as-cran adds for the Title, Description, and Authors@R fields (default true)
  R CMD check #25, #26
• maxDepends
  how many non-default packages Depends may list before it is reported, as R CMD check does after five (default 5)
  R CMD check #27
• maxImports
  how many non-base packages Imports may list before it is reported, 0 for no limit as R CMD check does by default (default 0)
  R CMD check #27

Examples

A project with the code R/code.R:

x <- 1

and the files

DESCRIPTION:

Package: pkg
Version: 1.0
Title: A Package
License: GPL-3 + file LICENSE

The linting query can be used to run this rule on the above example:

[ { "type": "linter",   "rules": [ { "name": "description-metadata",     "config": {} } ] } ]

Results (prettified and summarized):

Query: linter (3 ms)
   ╰ Description Metadata (description-metadata):
       ╰ certain:
           ╰ Required field missing or empty: 'Description' at /pkg/DESCRIPTION:1.1
           ╰ Required field missing or empty: 'Author' at /pkg/DESCRIPTION:1.1
           ╰ Required field missing or empty: 'Maintainer' at /pkg/DESCRIPTION:1.1
           ╰ Invalid license file pointers: LICENSE at /pkg/DESCRIPTION:4.1-29
           ╰ The Title field starts with the package name. at /pkg/DESCRIPTION:3.1-16

More examples are the test cases in test/functionality/linter/cmd-check/lint-description-metadata.test.ts.