How to run R package tests without building or installing the package?

Question

R CMD check automatically runs tests located in tests/ directory. However running the tests this way requires building the package first. After that R CMD check goes through various different sanity checks before finally reaching the tests at the end.

Question: Is there a way to run those tests without having to build or install the package first?

NOTE: without using testthat or other non-standard packages.

Answer 1

To summarise our discussion.

1. To my knowledge there is no standard alternative to R CMD check for unit testing provided by base R
2. Typically for unit testing, I source everything under R/ (and dyn.load everything under source/) and then source everything under tests/ (actually, I also use the Example sections of the help pages in the man/ directory as test cases and compare their outcome to those from previous package versions)

I assume that these are the basic testing functionalities provided by devtools and testthat. If you expect to develop multiple packages and want to stay independent from non-base-R, I'd recommed to automate the above processes with custom scripts/packages.

I'd recomment looking into http://r-pkgs.had.co.nz/tests.html.

Answer 2

The "vanilla" way to test a package without

• running R CMD check
• destroying an existing installation
• cluttering your working directory

is to install into a temporary directory tmp.lib and test that installation in a second temporary directory tmp.out using tools::testInstalledPackage:

pkg.name <- "Matrix"
pkg.root <- normalizePath(file.path("path", "to", pkg.name), mustWork = TRUE) # an absolute path (?)

tmp.lib <- tempfile()
tmp.out <- tempfile()
dir.create(tmp.lib)
dir.create(tmp.out)
owd <- setwd(tmp.out)

tools::Rcmd(c("build", pkg.root))

* checking for file '/x/y/z/path/to/Matrix/DESCRIPTION' ... OK
.
.
.
* building 'Matrix_1.5-5.tar.gz'

list.files(tmp.out)

[1] "Matrix_1.5-5.tar.gz"

tools::Rcmd(c("INSTALL", "-l", tmp.lib, "--install-tests", "*.tar.gz"))

* installing *source* package 'Matrix' ...
.
.
.
* DONE (Matrix)

list.files(tmp.lib)

[1] "Matrix"

tools::testInstalledPackage(pkg.name, lib.loc = tmp.lib, types = "tests")

Running specific tests for package 'Matrix'
  Running 'Class+Meth.R'
  Running 'Simple.R'
  Running 'abIndex-tsts.R'
  Running 'base-matrix-fun.R'
  Running 'bind.R'
  comparing 'bind.Rout' to 'bind.Rout.save' ... OK
  Running 'dg_Matrix.R'
  Running 'dpo-test.R'
  Running 'dtpMatrix.R'
  Running 'factorizing.R'
  Running 'group-methods.R'
  Running 'indexing.R'
  comparing 'indexing.Rout' to 'indexing.Rout.save' ... OK
  Running 'matprod.R'
  Running 'matr-exp.R'
  Running 'other-pkgs.R'
  Running 'packed-unpacked.R'
  Running 'spModel.matrix.R'
  Running 'symmDN.R'
  Running 'validObj.R'
  Running 'write-read.R'

list.files(tmp.out, recursive = TRUE)

 [1] "Matrix-tests/Class+Meth.R"         "Matrix-tests/Class+Meth.Rout"     
 [3] "Matrix-tests/Rplots.pdf"           "Matrix-tests/Simple.R"            
 [5] "Matrix-tests/Simple.Rout"          "Matrix-tests/abIndex-tsts.R"      
 [7] "Matrix-tests/abIndex-tsts.Rout"    "Matrix-tests/base-matrix-fun.R"   
 [9] "Matrix-tests/base-matrix-fun.Rout" "Matrix-tests/bind.R"              
[11] "Matrix-tests/bind.Rout"            "Matrix-tests/bind.Rout.save"      
[13] "Matrix-tests/dg_Matrix.R"          "Matrix-tests/dg_Matrix.Rout"      
[15] "Matrix-tests/dpo-test.R"           "Matrix-tests/dpo-test.Rout"       
[17] "Matrix-tests/dtpMatrix.R"          "Matrix-tests/dtpMatrix.Rout"      
[19] "Matrix-tests/factorizing.R"        "Matrix-tests/factorizing.Rout"    
[21] "Matrix-tests/group-methods.R"      "Matrix-tests/group-methods.Rout"  
[23] "Matrix-tests/indexing.R"           "Matrix-tests/indexing.Rout"       
[25] "Matrix-tests/indexing.Rout.save"   "Matrix-tests/matprod.R"           
[27] "Matrix-tests/matprod.Rout"         "Matrix-tests/matr-exp.R"          
[29] "Matrix-tests/matr-exp.Rout"        "Matrix-tests/mm-Matrix.tab"       
[31] "Matrix-tests/other-pkgs.R"         "Matrix-tests/other-pkgs.Rout"     
[33] "Matrix-tests/packed-unpacked.R"    "Matrix-tests/packed-unpacked.Rout"
[35] "Matrix-tests/spModel.matrix.R"     "Matrix-tests/spModel.matrix.Rout" 
[37] "Matrix-tests/symmDN.R"             "Matrix-tests/symmDN.Rout"         
[39] "Matrix-tests/validObj.R"           "Matrix-tests/validObj.Rout"       
[41] "Matrix-tests/write-read.R"         "Matrix-tests/write-read.Rout"     
[43] "Matrix_1.5-5.tar.gz"

setwd(owd)
unlink(tmp.out)
unlink(tmp.lib)

Of course, you would want to put all of that into a function, ideally with an option to not destroy the output directory so that you can inspect the .Rout files and any .Rout.fail files as needed.