Dependencies can be installed with aptitude for much faster build times. However, you are at the mercy of whatever R version is in the repos

installRpackagesViaApt.R

pkgDeps <- remotes::local_package_deps('.', dependencies=TRUE);

pkgDeps <- setdiff(pkgDeps, .packages(all.available = TRUE));

debCRANpkgs <- tolower(paste('r-cran-', pkgDeps, sep = ''));
debBIOCpkgs <- tolower(paste('r-bioc-', pkgDeps, sep = ''));

debPkgsAvailable <- RcppAPT::hasPackages(c(debCRANpkgs,debBIOCpkgs));
binariesToInstall <- names(debPkgsAvailable)[which(debPkgsAvailable)];

if(length(binariesToInstall) > 0){
   system.time(processx::run('apt-get', c('install', '--no-install-recommends', '--no-install-suggests', '-y', binariesToInstall), echo_cmd = TRUE, echo = TRUE))
}