[R-pkg-devel] How and where do I document sysdata.rda

[Charles Plessy]

Le Thu, Mar 20, 2025 at 12:56:49PM -0400, Kevin R. Coombes a ��crit :
> If it is *only *in sysdata.Rda, then it is accessible to your package 
> code but is not available to users. (They can't, for example, use the 
> "data" function to load it themselves.) So, there is no reason to 
> document it.

Hello Kevin and Michael,

Users who care about software provenance, security and software freedom would
love to see it documented, because binary objects are hard to audit when there
is no description of what they are expected to contain.

Redistributors who give guarantees to their users about software freedom, like
Debian, also want to see that these objects are easy to modify in case of need
(that is: the developer does not keep some secret receipes about how the object
is made to keep an advantage against forks and other forms of competition), and
to be able to check by themselves that they were not built from data that is
not placed under too restrictive terms.

When I write R packages and when I reeistribute CRAN/Bioconductor pakcages in
Debian, I find that the way documented in the R Packages book (./data-raw/,
usethis::use_data(), etc.) fits my needs very well.

Have a nice day,

Charles

--
Charles Plessy                         Nagahama, Yomitan, Okinawa, Japan
Debian Med packaging team         http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tooting from home                  https://framapiaf.org/@charles_plessy
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