[Rd] Test suite failures in R-devel_2017-02-25_r72256

[Peter Simons]

Hi,

I tried compiling the latest pre-release for R 3.3.3 for the NixOS Linux
distribution [1], but the build fails during the "make check" phase
because of the following 2 issues:

1) The "tools" test in "tests/Examples" requires network access, which
   it doesn't have in our build environment. Therefore, it fails as
   follows according to "tools-Ex.Rout.fail":

   | [...]
   | > set.seed(11)
   | > ## End(Don't show)
   | > pdb <- CRAN_package_db()
   | Warning in url(sprintf("%s/%s", cran, path), open = "rb") :
   |   URL 'http://CRAN.R-project.org/web/packages/packages.rds': status was 'Couldn't resolve host name'
   | Error in url(sprintf("%s/%s", cran, path), open = "rb") :
   |   cannot open the connection to 'http://CRAN.R-project.org/web/packages/packages.rds'
   | Calls: CRAN_package_db -> as.data.frame -> read_CRAN_object -> gzcon -> url
   | Execution halted

   I'm wondering whether it would be possible to extend the test suite
   with a configure-time flag that disable tests which depend on network
   access? My experience is that most modern Linux distributions run
   their builds in a restricted environment and therefore will run into
   trouble if the suite assumes that it can access the Internet.

2) When R is compiled with the --without-recommended-packages flag
   (which is our preferred configuration), the "base" test in
   "tests/Examples" fails, apparently because it depends on MASS. I'm
   citing from "base-Ex.Rout.fail":

   | >  ## The string "foo" and the symbol 'foo' can be used interchangably here:
   | >  stopifnot( identical(isNamespaceLoaded(  "foo"   ), FALSE),
   | +             identical(isNamespaceLoaded(quote(foo)), FALSE),
   | +             identical(isNamespaceLoaded(quote(stats)), statL))
   | >
   | > hasM <- isNamespaceLoaded("MASS") # (to restore if needed)
   | > Mns <- asNamespace("MASS") # loads it if not already
   | Error in loadNamespace(name) : there is no package called 'MASS'
   | Calls: asNamespace ... tryCatch -> tryCatchList -> tryCatchOne -> <Anonymous>
   | Execution halted

I hope this helps!

Best regards,
Peter



[1] http://nixos.org/