Graham,
For tests, can you add --no-byte-compile to R CMD INSTALL (via dh-r) to if that tickles it? Else, for other (big) packages I have set the CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS, (et al) to a lower level too. We could look at (R)QuantLib as an example. It has massive C++ compilation demands for RAM. Dirk -- http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | e...@debian.org