[Rd] CRAN build/checks: Dependencies on non-CRAN packages?

[Henrik Bengtsson]

Thank you all for these clarifications and for all your great
contributions to this project (can't be said too many times)!  /Henrik

On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 2:17 AM, Prof Brian Ripley<ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> On Mon, 8 Jun 2009, Kurt Hornik wrote:
>
>>>>>>> Henrik Bengtsson writes:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>> how is the CRAN build/check system dealing with dependencies on
>>> non-CRAN packages?  Are there external repositories that are dealt
>>> with in special ways, e.g. Bioconductor and Omegahat?  Is this
>>> documented somewhere?
>>
>>> The most recent note on this that I could locate is "[Rd] CRAN,
>>> Bioconductor and ctv package dependency questions", Kurt Hornik, Sept
>>> 8, 2005;
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2005-September/034547.html.
>>> Does the comments in that thread still reflect how CRAN works?
>>
>> Not quite.  No more special casing of BioC or Ohat dependencies: they
>> simply "work", and packages with such dependencies can fully be checked.
>
> With some caveats.  The CRAN check summaries are from four sets of systems
> (CRAN's, the Windows and Mac autobuilders and my server using the Sun Studio
> compiler) and hence four supervisors.
>
> Most of us install the BioC and Omegahat packages that are needed as
> dependencies in so far as we can (this looks to be less so for the Mac
> autobuilder).  But 'in so far as we can' has limits, not least the time
> needed to fiddle around with some of them.
>
> In principle if a package depended on an off-CRAN/BioC/Omegahat package and
> it was clear where to get it we would try to install it -- however, in all
> past instances I have failed in that installation.
>
> It may be worth adding that as the number of packages grows the total time
> available to work on those that fail does not increase (and all of us
> involved have less time for this than we once had), so the effort available
> per problematic package has decreased considerably. Also, Omegahat no longer
> provides Windows binaries and the alternatives (CRAN extras, BioC extras)
> only cover a few.
>
> --
> Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
> Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
> University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
> 1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
>