try installing ncdf4 from CRAN?

[cboettig]

Most debian binaries haven't been rebuilt yet for R 3.5.0. Better to install from CRAN?
Let's see what travis thinks...

[amoeba]

I was about to type: "Oh, I didn't know you could do that on Linux w/o extra work" and then the build failed due to not having the right deps.

[cboettig]

😛 yeah, I saw libnetcdf-dev in there and figured "oh good, the libs are already there', but of course ncdf4 is one of those weird packages that doesn't just bind the existing libs. let's try with the ncdf binaries as well....

[amoeba]

Looks like things settle down when I moved ncdf4 and other non-required packages to Suggests and turn off R CMD CHECK's _R_CHECK_FORCE_SUGGESTS which is a super weird default

[cboettig]

ncdf4 appears to be installing on my second attempt wtih netcdf-bin included; if you want to keep the suggests.

I think _R_CHECK_FORCE_SUGGESTS default makes sense because suggests are often used precisely for things that are needed for check (i.e. testthat, covr) but are not needed by the end user. I rarely list something in SUGGESTS unless it is needed by a vignette or a test.

[amoeba]

Ah, that actually makes a ton of sense.

I incorporated your changes with my changes that reduce the number of Depends

https://travis-ci.org/NCEAS/arcticdatautils/builds/377504630

let's see how this goes! Thanks

[amoeba]

Thanks for jumping in to help with this! I applied the same fix you've done here to my now-merged PR and all seems well so 👍 !