Error: contains a blank line

[kevinushey]

When attempting to install one of our packages with install_github, I get the error:

Error: contains a blank line

From what I can see, it occurs because devtools adds some extra GitHub-specific information to the DESCRIPTION file, but that DESCRIPTION file may have more than one newline ending the file. Hence, a blank line is left between the old DESCRIPTION fields and the new material added by devtools.

I think excessive final newlines should be stripped from the DESCRIPTION before modifying it, just to protect users from this error.

[hadley]

Could you provide a simple reproducible example?

[kevinushey]

Sure. Here's a commit on my package that breaks install_github:

kevinushey/Kmisc@2e5f662

library(devtools)
install_github("Kmisc", "kevinushey", ref="2e5f66201771919fa70001c69c45080338526387")

Undoing that fixes everything, of course (kevinushey/Kmisc@9441306)

library(devtools)
install_github("Kmisc", "kevinushey", ref="94413062dc275993d0de3461ebf5edda4d708f0a")

Of course, a more local solution as far as unit testing would be preferred, but either that means the code in install_github() should be refactored out into a testable piece or there needs to be some skeleton GitHub package that can be tested.

[hadley]

Ok - so the problem is only if there's a trailing empty line?

[hadley]

Ok, so this probably requires some refactoring of install_github() etc.

[kevinushey]

(Argh. Sorry, deleted my comment by accident.)

Basically, any blank line between fields will cause R CMD INSTALL to fail. If a DESCRIPTION file ends with edit: more than one blank line, it will be preserved, and install_github will append some GitHub-specific information, e.g.

...DESCRIPTION stuff...
VignetteBuilder: knitr

GitHubStuff: ...

and it is that blank line between fields, now generated, that causes it to fail.

[hadley]

Fixed by #439