When running rcmdcheck as follows as the --no-manual argument is missing, the source package being built for testing should include the pdf manual. However, the Rd files are not being converted to latex and then pdf.

rcmdcheck::rcmdcheck(args = c("--as-cran"), error_on = "warning")

So I am getting the following error.

 Package has help file(s) containing install/render-stage \Sexpr{} expressions but no prebuilt PDF manual.

As I see, rcmdcheck:::build_package does not build the pdf manual.

rcmdcheck:::build_package(path = ".", tmpdir = tempdir(),
                          libpath = .libPaths(), quiet = FALSE, build_args = "")

Alternatively with devtools::build the pdf manual is built.

devtools::build(path = ".", binary = FALSE, manual = TRUE)