Rmarkdown vignettes not building the vignette INDEX file

[jimhester]

I am trying to use an Rmarkdown vignette created using use_vignettes() and I encountered the ire of the esteemed Prof. Ripley upon package submission because my vignettes did not have a built index. Package has a VignetteBuilder field but no prebuilt vignette index. However I am not sure how to create this INDEX.

build_vignettes()
# NULL

I think this is not working because docs has no value

tools::pkgVignettes(dir = '.')
# $docs
# character(0)
# 
# $names
# character(0)
# 
# $engines
# character(0)
# 
# $patterns
# character(0)
# 
# $dir
# [1] "/Users/james.hester/Dropbox/projects/gmailr/vignettes"
# 
# $pkgdir
# [1] "/Users/james.hester/Dropbox/projects/gmailr"
# 
# $msg
# character(0)
# 
# attr(,"class")
# [1] "pkgVignettes"

Trying to call tools::buildVignettes() directly also fails

tools::buildVignettes(dir = '.', tangle=TRUE)
# Warning message:
# In tools::buildVignettes(dir = "..", tangle = TRUE) :
#   Files named as vignettes but with no recognized vignette engine:
#    ‘vignettes/sending_messages.Rmd’
# (Is a VignetteBuilder field missing?)

I can get the vignette to build by manually running rmarkdown::render() on the file, but that does not build the vignette INDEX file.

FYI the package I am having issues with is https://github.com/jimhester/gmailr

Session Info

Session info--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 setting  value
 version  R version 3.1.1 (2014-07-10)
 system   x86_64, darwin13.3.0
 ui       X11
 language (EN)
 collate  en_US.UTF-8
 tz       America/New_York

Packages------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 package    * version    date       source
 devtools   * 1.5.0.9001 2014-09-18 Github (hadley/devtools@69c99fa)
 evaluate     0.5.5      2014-04-29 CRAN (R 3.1.1)
 formatR      1.0        2014-08-25 CRAN (R 3.1.1)
 httr         0.5        2014-09-02 CRAN (R 3.1.1)
 knitr        1.6        2014-05-25 CRAN (R 3.1.1)
 RCurl        1.95.4.3   2014-07-29 CRAN (R 3.1.1)
 rstudioapi   0.1        2014-03-27 CRAN (R 3.1.1)
 setwidth   * 1.0.3      2013-01-16 CRAN (R 3.1.1)
 stringr      0.6.2      2012-12-06 CRAN (R 3.1.1)

[hadley]

I'm pretty sure this is because you have:

  \VignetteEngine{knitr::knitr}
  \VignetteIndexEntry{Sending Messages With Gmailr}
  \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

instead of

  %\VignetteEngine{knitr::knitr}
  %\VignetteIndexEntry{Sending Messages With Gmailr}
  %\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

which is completely my fault because I didn't realise the % was important to the regexp that R uses. (It's now fixed in the template and in the book, but you must've used an earlier version).

[jimhester]

I must have! That did fix the issue, thanks @hadley. using devtools release() almost made this CRAN interaction pain free.

[hadley]

Oh also, this qualifies you for the devtools guarantee, so if you email me your address, I'll send you a hand written apology card.

[gennaro-tedesco]

Hi all,

I am having the exact same issue as reported above, being unable to build the vignette index despite having the correct %\VignetteIndexEntry{<my vignette title>}.

Running

> build_vignettes()
NULL

returns a NULL value, nevertheless the vignette itself builds fine and there is no other warning of sort.

Is there any other particular trick that can conflict with creating the vignette index?

P. S. The package source codes can be found here: https://github.com/gennaro-tedesco/Rdice

[gunhanb]

Hi gennaro,
I have exactly same problem, build_vignettes() returns NULL. And I searched a lot, but could not find any solution.
When I use .Rnw file with knitr, it works. For this reason, I will use .Rnw (instead of .Rmd).

[muschellij2]

Getting NULL from build_vignettes can also happen when VignetteBuilder is not specified in the DESCRIPTION correctly.

This is because build_vignettes uses tools::pkgVignettes which uses tools::pkgVignettes which calls

    buildPkgs <- loadVignetteBuilder(dir, mustwork = FALSE)
    engineList <- vignetteEngine(package = buildPkgs)

and if you have not specified VignetteBuilder then loadVignetteBuilder doesn't recognize knitr or rmarkdown and will simply return utils and that's why a Rnw works (since utils::Sweave is found).

You should be able to add

VignetteBuilder: knitr

to the DESCRIPTION and should be fine.

[lock]

This old issue has been automatically locked. If you believe you have found a related problem, please file a new issue (with reprex) and link to this issue. https://reprex.tidyverse.org/