devtools::check generates an error (install options '--no-html --no-multiarch) at seemingly randomly times

Question

I am creating my own package and use devtools to document and check the package. About 50% of the time that I run devtools::check() it ends with this error:

❯ checking whether package 'snafun' can be installed ... ERROR See below...

── Install failure ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

install options '--no-html --no-multiarch

However, this only happens about half the time. Sometimes it doesn't and sometimes it does. I can run devtools::check several times in a row (without making any change to the code or the session in between) and get this error on half of the runs, and on the other half not. And sometimes it seems to help if I restart the session in between an other times it makes no difference.

I have tried playing with the arguments of devtools::check, but that doesn;t seem to affect the error (which could be related to this being an "Install failure" and devtools::check doesn't have install arguments).

I am puzzled. I have the following questions:

• what does this error even mean? Is it problematic?
• what can make it occur and disappear seemingly randomly?
• what might be a direction to solve this?

ps the package is quite large, so I can't really turn this into a reprex