CRAN & Vendoring | miniextendr

CRAN requires packages to build offline – no network access during R CMD INSTALL. miniextendr vendors all Rust dependencies into inst/vendor.tar.xz for self-contained builds.

🔗Quick Reference

# CRAN release prep:
just vendor            # 1. Create inst/vendor.tar.xz
just configure-cran    # 2. Configure in prepare-cran mode
just r-cmd-build       # 3. Build tarball
just r-cmd-check       # 4. Check the built tarball

🔗Build Contexts

The configure script resolves one of four contexts:

Context	When	Behavior
`dev-monorepo`	Inside the miniextendr repo	Uses `[patch]` paths, no vendoring
`dev-detached`	Standalone, no vendor artifacts	Uses git/network deps
`vendored-install`	Vendor artifacts present	Offline build from vendored sources
`prepare-cran`	`PREPARE_CRAN=true`	Explicit CRAN release prep

🔗How Vendoring Works

cargo-revendor vendors all crate dependencies (workspace + crates.io)
Dependencies are stripped (tests, benches, examples removed)
Cargo.toml files are frozen to resolve from vendor/ only
Everything is compressed into inst/vendor.tar.xz
During ./configure, the tarball is unpacked and cargo is configured for offline builds

🔗cargo-revendor

A standalone cargo subcommand (excluded from the miniextendr workspace) that replaces cargo vendor with CRAN-specific behavior:

Strips test/bench directories and dev-dependencies
Freezes Cargo.toml to use vendored sources only
Uses cargo package to resolve workspace inheritance
Sets COPYFILE_DISABLE=1 on macOS to prevent xattr metadata

🔗Scaffolding New Packages

The minirextendr R package scaffolds new miniextendr projects with vendoring built in:

library(minirextendr)
create_miniextendr_package("mypackage")

The generated configure.ac auto-detects the build context and handles vendoring transparently.