[Rd] declaring package dependencies

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 13/09/2013 10:18 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> On 13 September 2013 at 09:51, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> | Changes are generally announced in the NEWS.Rd file long before release,
> | but R-devel is an unreleased version, so you won't see the news until it
> | is there.  Announcing things that nobody can try leads to fewer useful
> | comments than putting them into R-devel where at least people can see
> | what is really happening.
>
> That comment makes sense _in theory_.
>
> Yet _in practice_ it does not as many of us have been shot down by tests in
> R-devel which had been implemented within a 48 hour window of the package
> submission.

It sounds as though you are talking about CRAN here, not R.  I can't 
speak for CRAN.

>
> Absent a time machine or psychic powers, I do not see how package developers
> can reasonably be expected to cope with this.

I'm a CRAN user as a package developer, and I do get emails about 
changes, but I don't find them overwhelming, and I don't recall 
receiving any that were irrational.  Generally the package is improved 
when I follow their advice.  It has happened that I have been slower 
than they liked in responding, but the world didn't end.

I imagine Rcpp pushes the limits more than my packages do, but I think 
most developers can cope.  After all, the number of packages on CRAN is 
increasing, not decreasing.

Duncan Murdoch

>
> I am not close to Python, but the little I know about their PEP system makes
> me think that a process in which changes are first announced as concepts,
> then discussed and refined and only thereafter implemented seems somewhat
> appealing.
>
> Dirk
>