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

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> Peter Simons <simons at nospf.cryp.to>
>>>>>     on Mon, 27 Feb 2017 10:30:39 +0100 writes:

    > 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. 

One may argue that the 'make check' (or even 'make check-all')
tests could / should be allowed more resources than the pure
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.

[see above] Is it necessary to also run the 'make check' part in
that restricted environment?  Or could that ('checking") not get
more priviledges?

Note that you can only run  "make check" if you don't install
recommended packages, whereas more thorough testing would
include
	make check-devel
or even
	make check-all

but these do have quite a bit more requirements including
recommended packages being present.


    > 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

Yes, that example should not have assumed a recommended package
to be available unconditionally.

I've changed it, thank you!


    > I hope this helps!

    > Best regards,
    > Peter



    > [1] http://nixos.org/

    > ______________________________________________
    > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
    > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel