[R-pkg-devel] nit-picking about CRAN repository policy

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 07/05/2022 7:30 p.m., Ben Bolker wrote:
> 
> 
> On 2022-05-07 7:17 p.m., Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>> On 07/05/2022 6:43 p.m., Ben Bolker wrote:
>>>
>>>      Folks,
>>>
>>>      CRAN has recently set up an auxiliary 'noSuggests' test platform that
>>> tests that packages are using suggested packages conditionally, as
>>> recommended in Writing R Extensions, and as (sort of) specified in the
>>> CRAN repository policy.
>>>
>>>      Specifically, the CRP (revision 5236) says:
>>>
>>>    > A package listed in ‘Suggests’ or ‘Enhances’ should be used
>>> conditionally in examples or tests if it cannot straightforwardly be
>>> installed on the major R platforms. (‘Writing R Extensions’ recommends
>>> that they are always used conditionally.)
>>>
>>>      One of my packages failed on the 'noSuggest' test platform
>>> <https://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/bdr/noSuggests/bbmle.out> because two
>>> suggested packages were used unconditionally in the vignette. There are
>>> two reasons (IMO) that this should *not* have triggered a threat of
>>> archiving:
>>>
>>>      (1) the unconditional package use was in a vignette, not in examples
>>> or tests
>>>      (2) the relevant packages (AICcmodavg and MuMIn) are available on
>>> CRAN and install easily on Linux/Windows/MacOS (they are R-only, no
>>> compiled code or extra requirements, binaries are available on CRAN).
>>>
>>>       Is it worth suggesting to CRAN maintainers that either they refine
>>> their 'noSuggests' test so that it conforms to the wording in the CRP,
>>> or that they change the CRP wording to something stricter like
>>>
>>>    > Any package listed in ‘Suggests’ or ‘Enhances’ should be used
>>> conditionally in examples, tests, and vignettes.
>>
>> I wouldn't think it's worth the time, but you could submit a suggested
>> patch to them if you feel like it.
>>
>> Personally I'd take a more extreme position than theirs:  your package
>> should check without errors if any subset of the Suggests packages is
>> installed.  This isn't practical to test, but "all" and "none" is at
>> least something.
>>
>> With vignette formats based on knitr, it's very easy to implement this.
>>    Just add a code chunk at the beginning with code like this:
>>
>>     if (!requireNamespace("sug1") ||
>>         !requireNamespace("sug2")) {
>>       warning(call. = FALSE, "This vignette requires sug1 and sug2 to be
>> installed")
>>       knitr::knit_exit()
>>     }
>>
>> I don't know if other vignette engines make it so easy to bail out, but
>> they should.
>>
>> Duncan Murdoch
> 
> 
>     Thanks.
> 
>     Fixing the problems isn't difficult or unreasonable (I will do it in
> a more subtle way, running chunks of code conditionally). I'm just
> feeling a little bit grumpy/defensive because:
> 
>    * CRAN  asked me to submit a patched version before May 7
>    * I submitted a patched version to CRAN at 7:30 PM local time on May 6
> (which is admittedly May 7 in UK/European time)
> * I woke up to an e-mail from CRAN to me and 50 downstream package
> maintainers saying that my package was scheduled for archiving, and a
> concerned message from a downstream package maintainer ...

As far as I know, the folks at CRAN are *always* grumpy.

Duncan