diff --git a/dev/tasks/homebrew-formulae/autobrew/apache-arrow.rb b/dev/tasks/homebrew-formulae/autobrew/apache-arrow.rb
index 2833b986593..92fb12174aa 100644
--- a/dev/tasks/homebrew-formulae/autobrew/apache-arrow.rb
+++ b/dev/tasks/homebrew-formulae/autobrew/apache-arrow.rb
@@ -74,7 +74,7 @@ def install
         return 0;
       }
     EOS
-    system ENV.cxx, "test.cpp", "-std=c++11", "-I#{include}", "-L#{lib}", "-larrow", "-lparquet", "-lthrift", "-llz4", "-lboost_system", "-lboost_filesystem", "-lboost_regex", "-ldouble-conversion", "-lsnappy", "-o", "test"
+    system ENV.cxx, "test.cpp", "-std=c++11", "-I#{include}", "-L#{lib}", "-larrow", "-lparquet", "-lthrift", "-llz4", "-lboost_system", "-lboost_regex", "-ldouble-conversion", "-lsnappy", "-o", "test"
     system "./test"
   end
 end
diff --git a/r/DESCRIPTION b/r/DESCRIPTION
index 228aa05b48d..d027017e2ad 100644
--- a/r/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/r/DESCRIPTION
@@ -40,7 +40,6 @@ Roxygen: list(markdown = TRUE, r6 = FALSE, load = "source")
 RoxygenNote: 6.1.99.9001
 VignetteBuilder: knitr
 Suggests:
-    covr,
     dplyr,
     hms,
     knitr,
diff --git a/r/NEWS.md b/r/NEWS.md
index 409214ea6b1..fa86da5cb31 100644
--- a/r/NEWS.md
+++ b/r/NEWS.md
@@ -21,7 +21,8 @@
 
 ## Data exploration
 
-* Tables and RecordBatches now have `dplyr` methods, conditionally loaded if you have `dplyr` available. You can `select()`, `filter()`, etc. and work will be done where possible in Arrow memory. When necessary, data is pulled into R for further computation.
+* Explore a multi-file dataset with `open_dataset()` and then use `dplyr` methods to `select()`, `filter()`, etc., and work will be done where possible in Arrow memory. When necessary, data is pulled into R for further computation. `dplyr` methods are conditionally loaded if you have `dplyr` available; it is not a hard dependency.
+* Tables and RecordBatches also have `dplyr` methods.
 * For exploration without `dplyr`, `[` methods for Tables, RecordBatches, Arrays, and ChunkedArrays now support natural row extraction operations. These use the C++ `Filter`, `Slice`, and `Take` methods for efficient access, depending on the type of selection vector.
 * An experimental, lazily evaluated `array_expression` class has also been added, enabling among other things the ability to filter a Table with some function of Arrays, such as `arrow_table[arrow_table$var1 > 5, ]` without having to pull everything into R first.
 
diff --git a/r/README.Rmd b/r/README.Rmd
index d34b218338d..5ba6689eee4 100644
--- a/r/README.Rmd
+++ b/r/README.Rmd
@@ -74,20 +74,7 @@ install.packages("arrow", repos="https://dl.bintray.com/ursalabs/arrow-r")
 
 These daily package builds are not official Apache releases and are not recommended for production use. They may be useful for testing bug fixes and new features under active development.
 
-Linux users will need to build the Arrow C++ library from source. See "Development" below. Once you have the C++ library, you can install the R package from GitHub using the [`remotes`](https://remotes.r-lib.org/) package. From within an R session,
-
-```r
-# install.packages("remotes") # Or install "devtools", which includes remotes
-remotes::install_github("apache/arrow/r")
-```
-
-or if you prefer to stay at the command line,
-
-```shell
-R -e 'remotes::install_github("apache/arrow/r")'
-```
-
-You can specify a particular commit, branch, or [release](https://github.com/apache/arrow/releases) to install by including a `ref` argument to `install_github()`. This is particularly useful to match the R package version to the C++ library version you've installed.
+Linux users will need to build the Arrow C++ library from source, then install the R package from source, as described in the next section.
 
 ## Developing
 
@@ -118,7 +105,7 @@ dependencies, along with additional dev dependencies, from the git checkout:
 
 ```shell
 cd ../../r
-R -e 'install.packages(c("devtools", "roxygen2", "pkgdown")); devtools::install_dev_deps()'
+R -e 'install.packages(c("devtools", "roxygen2", "pkgdown", "covr")); devtools::install_dev_deps()'
 R CMD INSTALL .
 ```
 
@@ -190,6 +177,7 @@ devtools::document() # Update roxygen documentation
 rmarkdown::render("README.Rmd") # To rebuild README.md
 pkgdown::build_site() # To preview the documentation website
 devtools::check() # All package checks; see also below
+covr::package_coverage() # See test coverage statistics
 ```
 
 Any of those can be run from the command line by wrapping them in `R -e
diff --git a/r/README.md b/r/README.md
index 3504d5a67b2..a4cc3117145 100644
--- a/r/README.md
+++ b/r/README.md
@@ -129,28 +129,8 @@ These daily package builds are not official Apache releases and are not
 recommended for production use. They may be useful for testing bug fixes
 and new features under active development.
 
-Linux users will need to build the Arrow C++ library from source. See
-“Development” below. Once you have the C++ library, you can install
-the R package from GitHub using the
-[`remotes`](https://remotes.r-lib.org/) package. From within an R
-session,
-
-``` r
-# install.packages("remotes") # Or install "devtools", which includes remotes
-remotes::install_github("apache/arrow/r")
-```
-
-or if you prefer to stay at the command line,
-
-``` shell
-R -e 'remotes::install_github("apache/arrow/r")'
-```
-
-You can specify a particular commit, branch, or
-[release](https://github.com/apache/arrow/releases) to install by
-including a `ref` argument to `install_github()`. This is particularly
-useful to match the R package version to the C++ library version you’ve
-installed.
+Linux users will need to build the Arrow C++ library from source, then
+install the R package from source, as described in the next section.
 
 ## Developing
 
@@ -197,7 +177,7 @@ checkout:
 
 ``` shell
 cd ../../r
-R -e 'install.packages(c("devtools", "roxygen2", "pkgdown")); devtools::install_dev_deps()'
+R -e 'install.packages(c("devtools", "roxygen2", "pkgdown", "covr")); devtools::install_dev_deps()'
 R CMD INSTALL .
 ```
 
@@ -265,6 +245,7 @@ devtools::document() # Update roxygen documentation
 rmarkdown::render("README.Rmd") # To rebuild README.md
 pkgdown::build_site() # To preview the documentation website
 devtools::check() # All package checks; see also below
+covr::package_coverage() # See test coverage statistics
 ```
 
 Any of those can be run from the command line by wrapping them in `R -e
diff --git a/r/configure b/r/configure
index f2fcb5b17da..003e1fb43ac 100755
--- a/r/configure
+++ b/r/configure
@@ -106,6 +106,11 @@ if [ "$ARROW_USE_OLD_CXXABI" ]; then
   PKG_CFLAGS="$PKG_CFLAGS -D_GLIBCXX_USE_CXX11_ABI=0"
 fi
 
+# Set any user-defined CXXFLAGS
+if [ "$ARROW_R_CXXFLAGS" ]; then
+  PKG_CFLAGS="$PKG_CFLAGS $ARROW_R_CXXFLAGS"
+fi
+
 # Test configuration
 TEST_CMD="${CXXCPP} ${CPPFLAGS} ${PKG_CFLAGS} ${CXX11FLAGS} ${CXX11STD} -xc++ -"
 echo "#include $PKG_TEST_HEADER" | ${TEST_CMD} >/dev/null 2>&1
@@ -129,11 +134,6 @@ else
   PKG_CFLAGS=""
 fi
 
-# Set any user-defined CXXFLAGS
-if [ "$ARROW_R_CXXFLAGS" ]; then
-  PKG_CFLAGS="$PKG_CFLAGS $ARROW_R_CXXFLAGS"
-fi
-
 # Write to Makevars
 sed -e "s|@cflags@|$PKG_CFLAGS|" -e "s|@libs@|$PKG_LIBS|" src/Makevars.in > src/Makevars
 
diff --git a/r/configure.win b/r/configure.win
index a38021f89cf..d1466e51be4 100644
--- a/r/configure.win
+++ b/r/configure.win
@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ RWINLIB="../windows/$(ls windows/ | grep ^arrow-)"
 OPENSSL_LIBS="-lcrypto -lcrypt32"
 
 PKG_CFLAGS="-I${RWINLIB}/include -DARROW_STATIC -DPARQUET_STATIC -DARROW_DS_STATIC -DARROW_R_WITH_ARROW"
-PKG_LIBS="-L${RWINLIB}/lib"'$(subst gcc,,$(COMPILED_BY))$(R_ARCH) '"-L${RWINLIB}/lib"'$(R_ARCH) '"-lparquet -larrow_dataset -larrow -lthrift -lsnappy -lboost_regex-mt-s -lboost_filesystem-mt-s -lboost_system-mt-s -ldouble-conversion -lz ${OPENSSL_LIBS} -lws2_32"
+PKG_LIBS="-L${RWINLIB}/lib"'$(subst gcc,,$(COMPILED_BY))$(R_ARCH) '"-L${RWINLIB}/lib"'$(R_ARCH) '"-lparquet -larrow_dataset -larrow -lthrift -lsnappy -lboost_regex-mt-s -lboost_system-mt-s -ldouble-conversion -lz ${OPENSSL_LIBS} -lws2_32"
 
 echo "*** Writing Makevars.win"
 sed -e "s|@cflags@|$PKG_CFLAGS|" -e "s|@libs@|$PKG_LIBS|" src/Makevars.in > src/Makevars.win
diff --git a/r/tools/autobrew b/r/tools/autobrew
index 9636c6f8efe..d659709e4fe 100644
--- a/r/tools/autobrew
+++ b/r/tools/autobrew
@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ fi
 
 # Hardcode this for my custom autobrew build
 rm -f $BREWDIR/lib/*.dylib
-PKG_LIBS="-L$BREWDIR/lib -lparquet -larrow_dataset -larrow -lthrift -llz4 -lboost_system -lboost_filesystem -lboost_regex -ldouble-conversion -lsnappy"
+PKG_LIBS="-L$BREWDIR/lib -lparquet -larrow_dataset -larrow -lthrift -llz4 -lboost_system -lboost_regex -ldouble-conversion -lsnappy"
 
 # Prevent CRAN builder from linking against old libs in /usr/local/lib
 for FILE in $BREWDIR/Cellar/*/*/lib/*.a; do