diff --git a/R/CRAN_RELEASE.md b/R/CRAN_RELEASE.md
index bea8f9fbe4..d6084c7a7c 100644
--- a/R/CRAN_RELEASE.md
+++ b/R/CRAN_RELEASE.md
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ To release SparkR as a package to CRAN, we would use the `devtools` package. Ple
 
 First, check that the `Version:` field in the `pkg/DESCRIPTION` file is updated. Also, check for stale files not under source control.
 
-Note that while `check-cran.sh` is running `R CMD check`, it is doing so with `--no-manual --no-vignettes`, which skips a few vignettes or PDF checks - therefore it will be preferred to run `R CMD check` on the source package built manually before uploading a release.
+Note that while `run-tests.sh` runs `check-cran.sh` (which runs `R CMD check`), it is doing so with `--no-manual --no-vignettes`, which skips a few vignettes or PDF checks - therefore it will be preferred to run `R CMD check` on the source package built manually before uploading a release. Also note that for CRAN checks for pdf vignettes to success, `qpdf` tool must be there (to install it, eg. `yum -q -y install qpdf`).
 
 To upload a release, we would need to update the `cran-comments.md`. This should generally contain the results from running the `check-cran.sh` script along with comments on status of all `WARNING` (should not be any) or `NOTE`. As a part of `check-cran.sh` and the release process, the vignettes is build - make sure `SPARK_HOME` is set and Spark jars are accessible.
 
diff --git a/R/check-cran.sh b/R/check-cran.sh
index c5f042848c..1288e7fc9f 100755
--- a/R/check-cran.sh
+++ b/R/check-cran.sh
@@ -34,8 +34,9 @@ if [ ! -z "$R_HOME" ]
     fi
     R_SCRIPT_PATH="$(dirname $(which R))"
 fi
-echo "USING R_HOME = $R_HOME"
+echo "Using R_SCRIPT_PATH = ${R_SCRIPT_PATH}"
 
+# Install the package (this is required for code in vignettes to run when building it later)
 # Build the latest docs, but not vignettes, which is built with the package next
 $FWDIR/create-docs.sh
 
@@ -82,4 +83,20 @@ else
   # This will run tests and/or build vignettes, and require SPARK_HOME
   SPARK_HOME="${SPARK_HOME}" "$R_SCRIPT_PATH/"R CMD check $CRAN_CHECK_OPTIONS SparkR_"$VERSION".tar.gz
 fi
+
+# Install source package to get it to generate vignettes rds files, etc.
+if [ -n "$CLEAN_INSTALL" ]
+then
+  echo "Removing lib path and installing from source package"
+  LIB_DIR="$FWDIR/lib"
+  rm -rf $LIB_DIR
+  mkdir -p $LIB_DIR
+  "$R_SCRIPT_PATH/"R CMD INSTALL SparkR_"$VERSION".tar.gz --library=$LIB_DIR
+
+  # Zip the SparkR package so that it can be distributed to worker nodes on YARN
+  pushd $LIB_DIR > /dev/null
+  jar cfM "$LIB_DIR/sparkr.zip" SparkR
+  popd > /dev/null
+fi
+
 popd > /dev/null
diff --git a/R/install-dev.sh b/R/install-dev.sh
index ada6303a72..0f881208bc 100755
--- a/R/install-dev.sh
+++ b/R/install-dev.sh
@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ if [ ! -z "$R_HOME" ]
     fi
     R_SCRIPT_PATH="$(dirname $(which R))"
 fi
-echo "USING R_HOME = $R_HOME"
+echo "Using R_SCRIPT_PATH = ${R_SCRIPT_PATH}"
 
 # Generate Rd files if devtools is installed
 "$R_SCRIPT_PATH/"Rscript -e ' if("devtools" %in% rownames(installed.packages())) { library(devtools); devtools::document(pkg="./pkg", roclets=c("rd")) }'
diff --git a/R/pkg/.Rbuildignore b/R/pkg/.Rbuildignore
index 544d203a6d..f12f8c275a 100644
--- a/R/pkg/.Rbuildignore
+++ b/R/pkg/.Rbuildignore
@@ -1,5 +1,8 @@
 ^.*\.Rproj$
 ^\.Rproj\.user$
 ^\.lintr$
+^cran-comments\.md$
+^NEWS\.md$
+^README\.Rmd$
 ^src-native$
 ^html$
diff --git a/R/pkg/DESCRIPTION b/R/pkg/DESCRIPTION
index 981ae12464..0cb3a80a6e 100644
--- a/R/pkg/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/R/pkg/DESCRIPTION
@@ -1,8 +1,8 @@
 Package: SparkR
 Type: Package
-Title: R Frontend for Apache Spark
 Version: 2.1.0
-Date: 2016-11-06
+Title: R Frontend for Apache Spark
+Description: The SparkR package provides an R Frontend for Apache Spark.
 Authors@R: c(person("Shivaram", "Venkataraman", role = c("aut", "cre"),
                     email = "shivaram@cs.berkeley.edu"),
              person("Xiangrui", "Meng", role = "aut",
@@ -10,19 +10,18 @@ Authors@R: c(person("Shivaram", "Venkataraman", role = c("aut", "cre"),
              person("Felix", "Cheung", role = "aut",
                     email = "felixcheung@apache.org"),
              person(family = "The Apache Software Foundation", role = c("aut", "cph")))
+License: Apache License (== 2.0)
 URL: http://www.apache.org/ http://spark.apache.org/
 BugReports: http://spark.apache.org/contributing.html
 Depends:
     R (>= 3.0),
     methods
 Suggests:
+    knitr,
+    rmarkdown,
     testthat,
     e1071,
-    survival,
-    knitr,
-    rmarkdown
-Description: The SparkR package provides an R frontend for Apache Spark.
-License: Apache License (== 2.0)
+    survival
 Collate:
     'schema.R'
     'generics.R'
diff --git a/R/pkg/NAMESPACE b/R/pkg/NAMESPACE
index daee09de88..377f9429ae 100644
--- a/R/pkg/NAMESPACE
+++ b/R/pkg/NAMESPACE
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
 importFrom("methods", "setGeneric", "setMethod", "setOldClass")
 importFrom("methods", "is", "new", "signature", "show")
 importFrom("stats", "gaussian", "setNames")
-importFrom("utils", "download.file", "object.size", "packageVersion", "untar")
+importFrom("utils", "download.file", "object.size", "packageVersion", "tail", "untar")
 
 # Disable native libraries till we figure out how to package it
 # See SPARKR-7839
diff --git a/dev/create-release/release-build.sh b/dev/create-release/release-build.sh
index aa42750f26..8863ee6cd7 100755
--- a/dev/create-release/release-build.sh
+++ b/dev/create-release/release-build.sh
@@ -150,7 +150,7 @@ if [[ "$1" == "package" ]]; then
     NAME=$1
     FLAGS=$2
     ZINC_PORT=$3
-    BUILD_PIP_PACKAGE=$4
+    BUILD_PACKAGE=$4
     cp -r spark spark-$SPARK_VERSION-bin-$NAME
 
     cd spark-$SPARK_VERSION-bin-$NAME
@@ -172,11 +172,30 @@ if [[ "$1" == "package" ]]; then
     MVN_HOME=`$MVN -version 2>&1 | grep 'Maven home' | awk '{print $NF}'`
 
 
-    if [ -z "$BUILD_PIP_PACKAGE" ]; then
-      echo "Creating distribution without PIP package"
+    if [ -z "$BUILD_PACKAGE" ]; then
+      echo "Creating distribution without PIP/R package"
       ./dev/make-distribution.sh --name $NAME --mvn $MVN_HOME/bin/mvn --tgz $FLAGS \
         -DzincPort=$ZINC_PORT 2>&1 >  ../binary-release-$NAME.log
       cd ..
+    elif [[ "$BUILD_PACKAGE" == "withr" ]]; then
+      echo "Creating distribution with R package"
+      ./dev/make-distribution.sh --name $NAME --mvn $MVN_HOME/bin/mvn --tgz --r $FLAGS \
+        -DzincPort=$ZINC_PORT 2>&1 >  ../binary-release-$NAME.log
+      cd ..
+
+      echo "Copying and signing R source package"
+      R_DIST_NAME=SparkR_$SPARK_VERSION.tar.gz
+      cp spark-$SPARK_VERSION-bin-$NAME/R/$R_DIST_NAME .
+
+      echo $GPG_PASSPHRASE | $GPG --passphrase-fd 0 --armour \
+        --output $R_DIST_NAME.asc \
+        --detach-sig $R_DIST_NAME
+      echo $GPG_PASSPHRASE | $GPG --passphrase-fd 0 --print-md \
+        MD5 $R_DIST_NAME > \
+        $R_DIST_NAME.md5
+      echo $GPG_PASSPHRASE | $GPG --passphrase-fd 0 --print-md \
+        SHA512 $R_DIST_NAME > \
+        $R_DIST_NAME.sha
     else
       echo "Creating distribution with PIP package"
       ./dev/make-distribution.sh --name $NAME --mvn $MVN_HOME/bin/mvn --tgz --pip $FLAGS \
@@ -222,7 +241,7 @@ if [[ "$1" == "package" ]]; then
   make_binary_release "hadoop2.6" "-Phadoop-2.6 $FLAGS" "3035" &
   make_binary_release "hadoop2.7" "-Phadoop-2.7 $FLAGS" "3036" "withpip" &
   make_binary_release "hadoop2.4-without-hive" "-Psparkr -Phadoop-2.4 -Pyarn -Pmesos" "3037" &
-  make_binary_release "without-hadoop" "-Psparkr -Phadoop-provided -Pyarn -Pmesos" "3038" &
+  make_binary_release "without-hadoop" "-Psparkr -Phadoop-provided -Pyarn -Pmesos" "3038" "withr" &
   wait
   rm -rf spark-$SPARK_VERSION-bin-*/
 
diff --git a/dev/make-distribution.sh b/dev/make-distribution.sh
index 49b46fbc3f..fe281bbaa2 100755
--- a/dev/make-distribution.sh
+++ b/dev/make-distribution.sh
@@ -34,6 +34,7 @@ DISTDIR="$SPARK_HOME/dist"
 
 MAKE_TGZ=false
 MAKE_PIP=false
+MAKE_R=false
 NAME=none
 MVN="$SPARK_HOME/build/mvn"
 
@@ -41,7 +42,7 @@ function exit_with_usage {
   echo "make-distribution.sh - tool for making binary distributions of Spark"
   echo ""
   echo "usage:"
-  cl_options="[--name] [--tgz] [--pip] [--mvn <mvn-command>]"
+  cl_options="[--name] [--tgz] [--pip] [--r] [--mvn <mvn-command>]"
   echo "make-distribution.sh $cl_options <maven build options>"
   echo "See Spark's \"Building Spark\" doc for correct Maven options."
   echo ""
@@ -71,6 +72,9 @@ while (( "$#" )); do
     --pip)
       MAKE_PIP=true
       ;;
+    --r)
+      MAKE_R=true
+      ;;
     --mvn)
       MVN="$2"
       shift
@@ -208,11 +212,24 @@ cp -r "$SPARK_HOME/data" "$DISTDIR"
 # Make pip package
 if [ "$MAKE_PIP" == "true" ]; then
   echo "Building python distribution package"
-  cd $SPARK_HOME/python
+  pushd "$SPARK_HOME/python" > /dev/null
   python setup.py sdist
-  cd ..
+  popd > /dev/null
 else
-  echo "Skipping creating pip installable PySpark"
+  echo "Skipping building python distribution package"
+fi
+
+# Make R package - this is used for both CRAN release and packing R layout into distribution
+if [ "$MAKE_R" == "true" ]; then
+  echo "Building R source package"
+  pushd "$SPARK_HOME/R" > /dev/null
+  # Build source package and run full checks
+  # Install source package to get it to generate vignettes, etc.
+  # Do not source the check-cran.sh - it should be run from where it is for it to set SPARK_HOME
+  NO_TESTS=1 CLEAN_INSTALL=1 "$SPARK_HOME/"R/check-cran.sh
+  popd > /dev/null
+else
+  echo "Skipping building R source package"
 fi
 
 # Copy other things