[Rd] Shy Suggestion?

[Jari Oksanen]

On Tue, 2005-09-20 at 10:03 -0400, Roger D. Peng wrote:
> I think the reason is that the standard for 'R CMD check' is that examples in 
> help pages are guaranteed to be executable by the user (as long as the 
> requirements are met).  There is no way to guarantee this without having the 
> packages installed.  So strictly speaking, the 'Suggested' packages are not 
> needed by the *user*, but are needed by the *maintainer*.
> 
> Perhaps, you differ with the standard itself, but I personally think it's a good 
> one.
> 
I am not sure this is a standard by design, but it rather seems to be an
"industrial standard" or a "de facto" standard because of the way its
check is implemented. However, I've learnt that my assumption about the
meaning of 'Suggests' was wrong, and I'll correct my beliefs and work
accordingly.

This was what I assumed: I have 203 functions, and five of these need
non-recommended packages. Many a user never notices any of these
functions, but I thought it might be polite to hint (or "suggest") that
they may (but need not) download some extra packages. Obviously
'Suggests' field can be used for this, but it seems to be used to so
many other and different purposes that using it for hinting is hardly
sensible.  To summarize the responses, 'Suggests' has following uses:

1. It actually is meant for maintainers instead of the users, and
therefore it should list all packages that the package depends on. It is
not 'Depends', though, since those packages are not attach'ed. There for
missing 'Suggests' packages is an ERROR.

2. 'Suggests' also should be used for 'BuildRequires' (since there in no
field of that name). Both the R-exts manual and several responders said
that 'Suggests' should contain those packages that are needed to, say,
build the package vignettes. After building these vignettes, those
packages are never needed, and won't be needed by users of binary
packages. Therefore agian the ERROR.

This was not a complaint nor a suggestion to change the tools, but only
an observation. I'm quite willing to work with this set of rules and
I'll comply with them. Again, the grammar confused me, since I didn't
know that suggestions are so absolute (even though I'm married).

cheers, jari oksanen
-- 
Jari Oksanen -- Dept Biology, Univ Oulu, 90014 Oulu, Finland
Ph. +358 8 5531526, cell +358 40 5136529, fax +358 8 5531061
email jari.oksanen at oulu.fi, homepage http://cc.oulu.fi/~jarioksa/