R-hub builder: there is no package called 'utf8'

[igor]

I used R-hub builder to build and check a package. It used to work as expected in the past. I am now getting an error when building the vignette:

Error in loadNamespace(name) : there is no package called 'utf8'
Calls: <Anonymous> ... loadNamespace -> withRestarts -> withOneRestart -> doWithOneRestart
Execution halted

This only shows up on the Windows build, so it's not a universal dependency. What is the proper approach to deal with this?

[maelle]

@igor! Your issue seems to be same as another one over in the rhub repo. (the rhub issue tracker is a good place for R-hub bug reports/problems )

@Gabor gave a workaround

rhub::check(
  platform="windows-x86_64-devel",
  env_vars=c(R_COMPILE_AND_INSTALL_PACKAGES = "always")
)

Does it solve the error?

[igor]

That works. Thank you for sharing.

I had some R 3.6 to 4.0 transition issues recently, so my first thought was that it might be related to that somehow.