Testing R package on Travis fails because of TeXLive incompatible versions

Question

I am writing an R package and using Travis for Continuous Integration. The tests on macOS fail because the system has a newer version of TeXLive and is unable to install the inconsolata font to build vignettes.

The Travis logs show:

sudo tlmgr install inconsolata upquote courier courier-scaled helvetic
tlmgr: The TeX Live versions supported by the repository
http://mirrors.concertpass.com/tex-archive/systems/texlive/tlnet
  (2016--2018)
do not include the version of the local installation
  (2019).

and further on, R is unable to build the vignettes:

* checking PDF version of manual ... WARNING
LaTeX errors when creating PDF version.
This typically indicates Rd problems.
LaTeX errors found:
! LaTeX Error: File `inconsolata.sty' not found.
Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed,
or enter new name. (Default extension: sty)
! Emergency stop.
<read *> 

l.276 ^^M

!  ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!
* checking PDF version of manual without hyperrefs or index ... ERROR
* DONE
Status: 1 ERROR, 1 WARNING

This failure throws a warning for R, which is upgraded to an error because I have warnings_are_errors: true in .travis.yml.

I tried this StackOverflow answer of reinstalling inconsolata in .travis.yml:

before_install:
  - if [[ "$TRAVIS_OS_NAME" == "osx" ]]; then
      brew cask install basictex;
      sudo tlmgr update --self;
      sudo tlmgr update --all;
      sudo tlmgr install titling framed inconsolata;
      sudo tlmgr install collection-fontsrecommended;
    fi

and this TexStackExchange thread of changing the TeX repository and running the same commands as Travis does when installing the system:

before_install:
  - if [[ "$TRAVIS_OS_NAME" == "osx" ]]; then
      sudo tlmgr option repository http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet;
      sudo tlmgr update --self
      sudo tlmgr install inconsolata upquote courier courier-scaled helvetic;
    fi  

and neither worked.

How can I install the inconsolata font?

Answer 1

This issue is due to the CTAN mirrors having yet to update. The issue appears in the Travis R community forum:

might be related to the recent switch to TexLive-2019 as the LaTeX package manager seems to fail finding inconsolata in the repository.

...

It looks to me like the mirror chosen was has not updated to 2019, so I think this will resolve itself naturally when the mirrors catch up. If not I can look into it.

In the meantime, I solved it by forcing a previous version of TeXLive with a downgrade to OSX 10.12 in .travis.yml:

# macOS 10.12 version
osx_image: xcode9.2

See this Travis page for the correspondence between XCode and OSX versions.