[Rd] R CMD check tells me 'no visible binding for globalvariable ', what does it mean?

[Henrik Bengtsson]

On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 5:51 PM, Thomas Lumley <tlumley at u.washington.edu> wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Apr 2010, Simon Urbanek wrote:
>
>>
>> On Apr 16, 2010, at 4:38 AM, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
>>
>>> I think what people are also thinking about is that the policy for
>>> publishing a package on CRAN is that it have to pass R CMD check with
>>> no errors, warnings *or* notes.

WRONG: As already said by other, it is indeed possible to get packages
with 'notes' onto CRAN.

I have at some point in history became to believe this, but I went
back in my submission log and I only found one case and it is was more
Kurt H. kindly suggesting that I should fix an incorrectly formatted
license (reported as a NOTE).  Thanks for making me aware of this.

Sorry for adding noise!

/Henrik


>>
>> Can you cite your reference, please? I see only (R-ext 1.5 Submitting a
>> package to CRAN):
>>
>> "Please ensure that you can run through the complete procedure with only
>> warnings that you understand and have reasons not to eliminate. In
>> principle, packages must pass R CMD check without warnings to be admitted to
>> the main CRAN package area. If there are warnings you cannot eliminate (for
>> example because you believe them to be spurious) send an explanatory note
>> with your submission."
>>
>> It talks explicitly about warnings, notes are not mentioned at all... That
>> said, you should examine all notes and make sure they are not indications of
>> problems.
>>
>
> In my experience, if a package is new or previously checked without notes,
> the CRAN maintainers will likely ask you to look at them to make sure they
> aren't problems, but there isn't any difficulty in getting a package on CRAN
> if it has notes.  A whole lot of packages on CRAN have notes even when
> checked on r-release.
>
> CMD check notes are the R equivalent of old-time lint warnings in C, and as
> the First Commandment says:
>         Thou shalt run lint frequently and study its pronouncements with
> care, for verily its perception and judgement oft exceed thine.
> and the prophet (Henry Spencer) expands on this:
>  ``Study'' doth not mean mindless zeal to eradicate every byte of lint
> output-if for no other reason, because thou just canst not shut it up about
> some things-but that thou should know the cause of its unhappiness and
> understand what worrisome sign it tries to speak of.



>
>
>         -thomas
>
> Thomas Lumley                   Assoc. Professor, Biostatistics
> tlumley at u.washington.edu        University of Washington, Seattle
>
>