Thank you for your input Jim. The inst/ directory seems to work well.
A related question, which I'll pose here since anyone who cares about my initial post will also care about it -- I am having an issue with running R CMD check (devtools::check()). I get a warning about undeclared executable files. When I try to follow the advice from the Package Structure section of Writing R Extensions (below), it seems the file is being ignored.
they are listed (one filepath per line) in a file BinaryFiles at the top level of the package
I have tried using both windows line endings (\r\n) and Unix line endings (\n). Both seem to be ignored.
I'm guessing the primary issue here is that R CMD check doesn't know to read BinaryFiles file as I also see a note that it is a "Non-Standard file/directory found at the top level".
Any suggestions you, or anyone else, has would be greatly appreciated.