I have an R github package that I can 'successfully' install using devtools::install_github("jwilliman/ethnicNZ") (or remotes::install_github). On github the package contains internal data saved as 'R/sysdata.Rda' using the command usethis::use_data(ethnic05, internal = TRUE).
However, after installation the files 'sysdata.rdb' and 'sysdata.rdx' are missing from the '../Library/ethnicNZ/R' folder, and when running the command ethnicNZ::find_data() from the package I get the error Error in ethnicNZ::find_data() : object 'ethnic05' not found. (These files are present, and the command works if I install the package directly from my local git).
This is possibly a similar issue as accessing sysdata.rda within package functions and R Package Build/Install Error: "object not found" even though I have it in R/sysdata.rda, but neither has an accepted answer. And hopefully my example is reproducible enough for others to troubleshoot.
EDIT
I just noticed on installation I get the error
Subdirectory 'R' contains invalid file names:
'sysdata.Rda'
Why is this invalid, and how can I avoid it?
sessionInfo()
#> R version 4.0.0 (2020-04-24)
#> Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
#> Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 17134)
#>
#> Matrix products: default
#>
#> locale:
#> [1] LC_COLLATE=English_New Zealand.1252 LC_CTYPE=English_New Zealand.1252
#> [3] LC_MONETARY=English_New Zealand.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C
#> [5] LC_TIME=English_New Zealand.1252
#>
#> attached base packages:
#> [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
#>
#> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
#> [1] compiler_4.0.0 magrittr_1.5 tools_4.0.0 htmltools_0.4.0
#> [5] yaml_2.2.1 Rcpp_1.0.4.6 stringi_1.4.6 rmarkdown_2.1
#> [9] highr_0.8 knitr_1.28 stringr_1.4.0 xfun_0.14
#> [13] digest_0.6.25 rlang_0.4.6 evaluate_0.14
Created on 2020-06-17 by the reprex package (v0.3.0)
Case matters! The file must be called 'sysdata.rda' not 'sysdata.Rda'.
I discovered that I'd previously saved the data as save(ethnic05, filename = "sysdata.Rda"), then later changed to using usethis::use_data(ethnic05, internal = TRUE). usethis::use_data saved over the previous file but did not correct the case of the extension. I had to delete 'sysdata.Rda', commit and push to github before reinstate the correct sysdata.rda.
As listed under section 1.1.5 of https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-exts.html,
"The R subdirectory contains R code files, only. The code files to be installed must ... have one of the extensions13 .R, .S, .q, .r, or .s. ... Two exceptions are allowed: if the R subdirectory contains a file sysdata.rda.