Package vignette depends on tikz / pgf

Question

My R vignette uses tikz / pgf graphics. CM Verification Command CMD displays an error message on operating systems where LaTeX tikz / pgf is not installed. For example, on a Ubuntu vanilla system, the Uguntu pgf package must be installed to check R CMD to complete without an error message. It seems that tikz / pgf is installed on the CRAN servers, but I can’t make sure that it is always and everywhere. Is there a way to add a pgf dependency to the DESCRIPTION file of my R package? Can I add it to the Dependencies field (although this is not an R package)? I would not want the trash chart because the package vignette is an article published in the journal of statistical software and I would like to use it as a vignette without any changes.

Answer 1

From http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-exts.html#The-DESCRIPTION-file :

Other dependencies (external to the R system) should be indicated in the "SystemRequirements" field, possibly reinforced in a separate README file.

There will be no message about an automatic or informative error generated by the R installation process, but at least the information will be stored in a consistent place ...