Building Windows R templates via GitHub Actions

[ESKYoung]

I've tried to write GitHub Actions for CI purposes. One of them builds templates for various OS, Python versions, and R versions. During the template build, it will check that there are no errors building Sphinx documentation, and that the pre-commit hooks run cleanly.

This seems to work well for both ubuntu and macOS, aside from a relatively long processing time for R pre-commit hooks occasionally. However, for Windows, I run into the following error for the R pre-commit hooks (whilst building a project called example):

Running "C:/R/bin/x64/Rcmd.exe" INSTALL \
  "C:\Users\RUNNER~1\AppData\Local\Temp\RtmpKsZqKO/example_0.0.1.tar.gz" \
  --install-tests 
* installing to library 'D:/a/_temp/Library'

* installing *source* package 'example' ...

** using staged installation

** libs



*** arch - i386

no DLL was created

ERROR: compilation failed for package 'example'

* removing 'D:/a/_temp/Library/example'


Error: Error: System command 'Rcmd.exe' failed, exit status: 1, stdout & stderr were printed

 Stack trace:

 1. base:::source("startup.R")
 2. base:::withVisible(eval(ei, envir))
 3. base:::eval(ei, envir)
 4. base:::eval(ei, envir)
 5. devtools::install()
 6. pkgbuild::with_build_tools(required = FALSE, callr::rcmd("INSTALL",  ...
 7. withr::with_path(rtools_path(), code)
 8. base:::force(code)
 9. callr::rcmd("INSTALL", c(install_path, opts), echo = !quiet,  ...
 10. callr:::run_r(options)
 11. base:::with(options, with_envvar(env, do.call(processx::run,  ...
 12. base:::with.default(options, with_envvar(env, do.call(processx::run,  ...
 13. base:::eval(substitute(expr), data, enclos = parent.frame())
 14. base:::eval(substitute(expr), data, enclos = parent.frame())
 15. callr:::with_envvar(env, do.call(processx::run, c(list(bin, args = real_cmd ...
 16. base:::force(code)
 17. base:::do.call(processx::run, c(list(bin, args = real_cmdargs,  ...
 18. (function (command = NULL, args = character(), error_on_status = TRUE,  ...
 19. throw(new_process_error(res, call = sys.call(), echo = echo,  ...

 x System command 'Rcmd.exe' failed, exit status: 1, stdout & stderr were printed 

Execution halted

Run roxygen2::roxygenize()...............................................(no files to check)Skipped
Run sethis::use_tidy_description()...........................................................Passed
Run lintr::lint()............................................................................Passed
Check README.Rmd has been rendered to README.md..............................................Failed
- hook id: readme-rmd-rendered
- exit code: 1

Executable `/bin/bash` not found

Check for valid R code using the parse() function............................................Passed
Check for accidential browser() statements...................................................Passed
Error: Process completed with exit code 1.

I don't have this issue when building a new project and running the R pre-commit hooks on my local Windows machine, only on GitHub Actions. As I'm not an active R user, I'm opening this up to others to fix.

In the meantime, I will limit the template build CI to only ubuntu and macOS - the GitHub Action exists on the tidy-repository branch.