diff --git a/.Rbuildignore b/.Rbuildignore
index 3aae5eb..92af394 100644
--- a/.Rbuildignore
+++ b/.Rbuildignore
@@ -1,3 +1,6 @@
+^CRAN-RELEASE$
+^Meta$
+^doc$
 TAGS
 TODO
 cleanup
diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 2b88932..88133c6 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+Meta
+doc
 *.o
 *.so
 .Rhistory
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 46cadf7..675f2a6 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+## CHANGES in phylobase VERSION 0.8.6
+
+* CRAN maintenance release following updates to RNeXML.
+
 ## CHANGES in phylobase VERSION 0.8.4
 
 *  CRAN maintenance release
diff --git a/cran-comments.md b/cran-comments.md
index 70d9fda..d1bc5be 100644
--- a/cran-comments.md
+++ b/cran-comments.md
@@ -1,22 +1,16 @@
-This submission follows an email sent to me by Kurt Hornik on April 7th, 2017.
+This submission follows an email sent to me by Kurt Hornik on January 25th, 2019.
 
 ## Test environments
 
-- local Ubuntu 16.10, R 3.3.3
-- Ubuntu 12.04 (travis-ci), R 3.3.3
-- Windows with win-builder (R 3.3.3 and R-devel r72555)
-- Debian Testing with R-devel (r72514)
+- local Ubuntu 18.10, R 3.5.2
+- Ubuntu 14.04 (travis-ci), R 3.5.2 and R-devel
+- Windows with win-builder (R 3.5.2 and R-devel 2019-01-27 r76018)
 
 
 ## R CMD check results
 
 - There were no ERRORs or WARNINGs
 
-- There was 1 NOTE:
-  * checking CRAN incoming feasibility ... NOTE
-    Maintainer: 'Francois Michonneau <francois.michonneau@gmail.com>'
-    Possibly mis-spelled words in DESCRIPTION:
-    Phylogenetic (4:25)
 
 ## Downstream dependencies