[R] Should I wrap more package examples in \dontrun{} ?

[Yihui Xie]

But "don't use those packages that cause you trouble" implies you will
have to reinvent and maintain all the wheels by yourself?

What I do for long/complicated/time-consuming examples is I move them
to package websites or separate repositories. For example, I started
to use Vistat to show examples of the animation package (e.g. I write
http://vis.supstat.com/2013/04/buffons-needle/ in the References in
?buffon.needle), and the knitr-examples repository
(https://github.com/yihui/knitr-examples) to serve as both a testing
repository and a learning repository. In these cases, it will reduce
the check time on CRAN, and I'll know potential problems before CRAN's
ticket comes. Of course, example(foo) won't show the long examples any
more, but I believe it is worth it, since you gain more: you can make
websites more visually pleasant than Rd (R documentation), you can
show output so users do not really have to open R and run
example(foo), and you have comments/interactivity/Google Analytics,
etc... Rd is an excellent format for documenting function arguments
and showing quick examples, though.

Regards,
Yihui
--
Yihui Xie <xieyihui at gmail.com>
Web: http://yihui.name
Department of Statistics, Iowa State University
2215 Snedecor Hall, Ames, IA


On Tue, Sep 3, 2013 at 10:14 AM, Duncan Murdoch
<murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 03/09/2013 10:49 AM, Kevin Wright wrote:
>>
>> I have a package with more than 100 datasets, each of which has an
>> \examples{} section.  On the plus side, these example test the "R
>> ecosystem" to make sure that everything is working (both my package and
>> others' packages).  On the down side, changes in this ecosystem have
>> caused
>> repeated NOTEs and WARNINGs from CRAN.
>>
>> As a commentary on one recent R-help discussion, none of the code
>> breakages
>> have been caused by use of ":::".  All of the problems have been caused by
>> (1) Changes in "stable" packages and (2) changing CRAN requirements (3)
>> changes in "beta" packages. In roughly that order.
>>
>> In the interest of long-term package stability I'm thinking about wrapping
>> more of the examples in my package in \dontrun{}.  Especially the parts
>> that depend on other packages.
>>
>> I'm interested to know how other package developers approach this problem.
>>
> As a user of your package, I would find it irritating if example(foo) didn't
> run anything.   It would be more irritating (and would indicate sloppiness
> on your part) if the examples failed when I cut and pasted them.  These both
> suggest leaving the examples running.
>
> As the author of your package, it sounds as though you find it quite
> irritating when other authors break your code.
>
> Isn't the right solution to this to work with the other package authors to
> come up with code that is unlikely to break?  If that's not possible, then
> maybe don't use those packages that cause you trouble.
>
> Duncan Murdoch