Rhub CRAN check keeps giving HTML note on Fedora test - no command 'tidy' found

Question

I'm developing an R package to be uploaded to CRAN and I keep getting a NOTE when I run

devtools::check_rhub()

The results I'm getting are:

> On fedora-clang-devel (r-devel)
checking HTML version of manual . . . NOTE
Skippping checking HTML validation: no command 'tidy' found

I keep trying to fix it but I'm not sure of where the problem is... also, it runs fine on Windows and Ubuntu.

Does anyone know what I should do? Or is it possible that CRAN will ignore this note?

Thanks in advance.

I tried fixing it by checking for any HTML code that I had, but deleted those.

I tried updating HTML Tidy on my macOS to the newest version, but also nothing changed.

I expect to figure out how to solve this.

Mattox

Answer 1

This NOTE refers to a piece of system software that is missing on the test platform. You can't fix it by updating any system tools on your local system, as that's not where the problem is. Someone (possibly you?) has already posted an issue on Github, which is the correct place to follow up.

This NOTE should not be a problem for CRAN submission; the only issue is that your HTML is not being validity-checked on Fedora. Presumably any validity problems will be discovered when the HTML is checked on other platforms; the only (unlikely) edge case would be where you have HTML generated by your package that for some reason would fail validity checks only on Fedora.

Stethoscope

Answer 2

I was having the same issue on Windows and fixed it by installing the latest version of Rtools (specific for R Devel 4.3). Not sure if Linux uses Rtools or simply has the included programs already installed, but perhaps updating any Linux programs that correspond to the Rtools programs might help.

Auberge