This GitHub Action automates the process of checking and submitting R packages to CRAN (The Comprehensive R Archive Network). It performs all necessary checks to ensure your package complies with CRAN policies and then submits it, creating an issue to track the submission status.

You can see a demo of this action in action here.

Create a new submit-cran.yml workflow in your repository's .github/workflow directory containing:

name: Submit to CRAN

on:
  release:
    types: [prereleased]           # Only trigger on pre-releases

jobs:
  cran-submission:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    name: Submit package to CRAN
    permissions:
      contents: read
      issues: write                # Needed to create issues
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      
      - name: Submit R package to CRAN
        uses: coatless-actions/cran-submission@v1
        with:
          pkg-directory: '.'       # Directory containing the package
          check-directory: 'check' # Directory for check outputs
          error-on: 'warning'      # Fail on warnings
          create-issue: true       # Create issues to track submissions

This workflow will trigger on pre-releases and submit the package to CRAN.

To begin, create a new release that is "pre-release" in your repository by selecting the "Create a new release" button on the repository's main page (GitHub Help: Managing releases in a repository).

From there, fill out the release information such as a version tag (0.1.0), title, and description. Make sure to select the "This is a pre-release" checkbox before publishing the release.

This will trigger the workflow and start the submission process.

For each submission, the action will create a new issue in the repository to track the submission status. The issue will indicate whether the submission was successful or failed and version information about the package.

MIT