Try R_LIBS_USER again in occasional check (#6278)

* Try R_LIBS_USER again

* Sort library output

.github/workflows/R-CMD-check-occasional.yaml

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 on:
   schedule:
-   - cron: '17 13 16 * *' # 16th of month at 13:17 UTC
+   - cron: '17 13 17 * *' # 17th of month at 13:17 UTC
 
 # A more complete suite of checks to run monthly; each PR/merge need not pass all these, but they should pass before CRAN release
 name: R-CMD-check-occasional
@@ -100,38 +100,47 @@ jobs:
           _R_CHECK_FORCE_SUGGESTS_: false
           _R_CHECK_CRAN_INCOMING_REMOTE_: false
           _R_CHECK_TESTS_NLINES_: 0
+          R_LIBS_USER: /home/runner/work/r-lib
         run: |
           options(crayon.enabled = TRUE)
-
           remotes::install_deps(dependencies=TRUE, force=TRUE)
-          other_deps_expr = parse('inst/tests/other.Rraw', n=1L)
-          eval(other_deps_expr)
-          pkgs = get(as.character(other_deps_expr[[1L]][[2L]]))
-          # Many will not install on oldest R versions
-          try(remotes::install_cran(c(pkgs, "rcmdcheck"), force=TRUE))
 
           # we define this in data.table namespace, but it appears to be exec
-          if (!exists("isFALSE", "package:base")) {
+          if (!exists("isFALSE", "package:base")) { # R>=3.5.0
             if (!exists("isFALSE", asNamespace("data.table"))) {
               message("isFALSE not found in base, but data.table did not define it either!\n")
             }
             # attempt defining it here as a workaround...
             isFALSE = function(x) is.logical(x) && length(x) == 1L && !is.na(x) && !x
           }
 
-          has_pkg = sapply(pkgs, requireNamespace, quietly=TRUE)
-          run_other = all(has_pkg)
+          other_deps_expr = parse('inst/tests/other.Rraw', n=1L)
+          eval(other_deps_expr)
+          other_pkgs = get(as.character(other_deps_expr[[1L]][[2L]]))
+          # Many will not install on oldest R versions
+          try(remotes::install_cran(c(other_pkgs, "rcmdcheck"), force=TRUE))
+
+          has_other_pkg = sapply(other_pkgs, requireNamespace, quietly=TRUE)
+          run_other = all(has_other_pkg)
           if (!run_other) {
-            message(sprintf("Skipping other.Rraw since some required packages are not available: %s\n", toString(pkgs[!has_pkg])))
+            message(sprintf("Skipping other.Rraw since some required packages are not available: %s\n", toString(other_pkgs[!has_other_pkg])))
           }
+          message("Will try and set TEST_DATA_TABLE_WITH_OTHER_PACKAGES=", as.character(run_other), " in R CMD check.")
           # IINM rcmdcheck isolates its env from the calling process', besides what's passed to env=
-          env = c(TEST_DATA_TABLE_WITH_OTHER_PACKAGES=as.character(run_other))
+          env = c(
+            TEST_DATA_TABLE_WITH_OTHER_PACKAGES=as.character(run_other),
+            R_LIBS_USER=Sys.getenv("R_LIBS_USER")
+          )
 
           do_vignettes = requireNamespace("knitr", quietly=TRUE)
 
-          build_args = if (!do_vignettes) "--no-build-vignettes"
+          build_args = NULL
           check_args = c("--no-manual", "--as-cran")
-          if (!do_vignettes) check_args = c(check_args, "--no-build-vignettes", "--ignore-vignettes")
+          if (!do_vignettes) {
+            message("Skipping vignettes since knitr is unavailable.")
+            build_args = "--no-build-vignettes"
+            check_args = c(check_args, "--no-build-vignettes", "--ignore-vignettes")
+          }
           if (requireNamespace("rcmdcheck", quietly=TRUE)) {
             rcmdcheck::rcmdcheck(args = check_args, build_args = build_args, error_on = "warning", check_dir = "check", env=env)
           } else {

inst/tests/other.Rraw

@@ -29,8 +29,8 @@ loaded = sapply(pkgs, f)
 if (!all(loaded)) {
   options(warning.length=8000)
   stop(
-    "test.data.table('other.Rraw') failed to attach required package(s): ", toString(names(loaded)[!loaded]), ".",
-    "\nHere's all installed packages:\n  ", paste(rownames(installed.packages()), collapse=","),
+    "test.data.table('other.Rraw') failed to attach required package(s): ", toString(sort(names(loaded)[!loaded])), ".",
+    "\nHere's all installed packages:\n  ", paste(sort(rownames(installed.packages())), collapse=","),
     "\nHere's the search() path:\n  ", paste(search(), collapse="->"),
     "\nIf you can't install them and this is R CMD check, please set environment variable TEST_DATA_TABLE_WITH_OTHER_PACKAGES back to the default, false; it's currently ", Sys.getenv("TEST_DATA_TABLE_WITH_OTHER_PACKAGES", "<unset>"), ".")
   # Would like to install them now for convenience but gitlab-ci.yml seems to install to bus/mirror-other-packages/cran.