ah, i see -- my original reason for including `texlive-full` was as a hammer to get manuals/vignettes building, but it took too long to install. i don't have anything against including parts of tex.

so this sounds perfect -- `r-base-dev` already has smarts in its dependencies to pull in a smallish set that includes what we need. is that intended to be enough for building manuals/vignettes? if so, then the only worry is whether or not building manuals/vignettes slows down `R CMD check` too much.