With R's install.packages(), it is possible to exclude certain parts of a package, which are only helpful during development - such as help pages and example data - to yield lightweight runtime environments (e.g. smaller Docker images):
install.packages('data.table',
INSTALL_opts = c('--no-docs', '--no-help', '--no-html', '--no-data'))
Now, I am wondering, if such a feature exists also for renv (and I was just too blind to find it on the web)?
From https://rstudio.github.io/renv/reference/install.html#package-configuration:
Similarly, additional flags that should be passed to R CMD INSTALL can be set via the install.opts R option:
# installation of R packages using the Windows Subsystem for Linux # may require the `--no-lock` flag to be set during install options(install.opts = "--no-lock") renv::install("xml2")
You can also use the package name in the option, e.g.
options(install.opts = list(xml2 = <...>))
if you wanted package-specific installation options; e.g. you wanted to exclude vignettes for certain packages.