Function name is not a valid topic name?

[robmoss]

I experience an error on GitLab CI, but not locally, where pkgdown 2.0.7 raises an error when building the function reference:

! In '_pkgdown.yml', topic must be a known topic name or alias
✖ Not 'retic_steady_state'

where retic_steady_state is a documented and exported function in my package. The reference section of _pkgdown.yaml looks like:

reference:
- title: "Model parameters"
  desc: >
    Functions that ...
  contents:
  - ends_with("_parameters")
  - retic_steady_state

In both cases, I'm calling R -e 'pkgdown::build_site()' from the command line, and the site builds without any issues on my laptop. I can't figure out why it behaves completely differently on GitLab CI — do you have any ideas? I can link to the CI job if that would be helpful.

[maelle]

A link might help indeed!
One possibility: could the help file have been gitignored, or just not pushed to the repository?

[robmoss]

Thanks very much. Here's a link to the CI jobs: https://gitlab.unimelb.edu.au/rgmoss/malaria-spleen-rbc-loss/-/pipelines/82106 The vignettes build successfully (in a separate job) and all of the source files in the `R` directory are version tracked. So I'm struggling to think if anything else I can check or change.

…

________________________________ From: Maëlle Salmon ***@***.***> Sent: Tuesday, 19 March 2024 5:11 PM To: r-lib/pkgdown ***@***.***> Cc: Rob Moss ***@***.***>; Author ***@***.***> Subject: Re: [r-lib/pkgdown] Function name is not a valid topic name? (Issue #2422) A link might help indeed! One possibility: could the help file have been gitignored, or just not pushed to the repository? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#2422 (comment)>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABJ2LG444MD3O4SEXGNAMRDYY7JKFAVCNFSM6AAAAABE44USQ2VHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDAMBVHA3DANBUGI>. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[maelle]

@robmoss There's a .gitignore file in man/, that ignores all the .Rd file. pkgdown does not run devtools::document() so you'd need to either

• add this step to the workflow that intends to build the website,
• remove man/.gitignore.

I'd recommend doing the latter, because it's unusual to not commit the Rd files to the code source repository, even if those are "derived files".

With the Rd files checked into the repository, you could even simplify the installation instructions I think (recommending using pak (see also pak package source), or install.packages() if you set up an R-universe).

[robmoss]

Thank you very much for your help, I doubt I would have ever figured that out!

[maelle]

Note that for package development issues, the problem can also sometimes be .Rbuildignore -- those pesky ignore files should not be... ignored 😸

[robmoss]

@maelle thanks very much for your advice. I've managed to set up a personal R-universe and simplified the installation instructions as a result.