[Rd] Case: package removed from CRAN, but not orphaned

[Ben Bolker]

Joris Meys <jorismeys <at> gmail.com> writes:

> 
> I agree completely with Uwe on this one. Yet, the idea of Rainer is
> useful if you replace "remove the package" by "orphan the package".
> Some sort of automated orphanization. The package remains available
> that way if I understood it right, and can more easily be adopted by
> another developer that feels responsible. It might also make the
> manual cleanup (i.e. detecting poorly maintained packages without a
> responsive developer) a bit easier. After all, clicking a link once
> every so often to indicate you're still following the package isn't
> too much work for a package developer, and it could help the CRAN
> maintainers. Or am I completely off here?
> 

  Just a tiny update: 

  Thanks to the great new "packdep" package, it's very easy
to find out how many of the packages on CRAN have *no* reverse
dependencies:

library(packdep)
d1 <- map.depends()
c <- dependencies(d1)
sum(c$reverse==0)/nrow(c)

  66%.  Furthermore, I would guess that orphaned packages would be
more likely to be in this 66%.  What about exempting packages with
any reverse dependencies from the auto-orphanization process?

  Ben Bolker