Using a static (prebuilt) PDF vignette in R package

This works with a plain LaTeX trick as described in in this blog post.

I recently switched to doing this with the current R version (i.e. now 3.6.0), see this wrapper .Rnw file which contains just:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pdfpages}
%\VignetteIndexEntry{Using Annoy in C++}
%\VignetteKeywords{Rcpp, Annoy, R, Cpp, Approximate Nearest Neighbours}
%\VignettePackage{RcppAnnoy}

\begin{document}
\includepdf[pages=-, fitpaper=true]{UsingAnnoyInCpp.pdf}
\end{document}

The advantage is that this uses Sweave for a completely traditional vignette build, and imposes no additional dependencies whatsover.

With R.rsp (>= 1.19.0) you can include a static PDF 'vignettes/main.pdf' by adding a tiny 'vignettes/main.pdf.asis' text file that contains:

%\VignetteIndexEntry{My amazing package}
%\VignetteEngine{R.rsp::asis}

and make sure to have:

Suggests: R.rsp
VignetteBuilder: R.rsp

in your package's DESCRIPTION file. This also works for static HTML vignettes. This is also explained in one of the R.rsp vignettes.