[Rd] as-cran issue

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 13/01/2020 11:02 a.m., Therneau, Terry M., Ph.D. via R-devel wrote:
> Where can I find out (and replicate) what options as-cran turns on?
> 
> The issue: the following lines generate an error in R CMD check --as-cran  for coxme.  But
> there is no error without as-cran nor is there one when I run the code in a terminal window.
> 
> ismat <- function(x)  inherits(x, "matrix") || inherits(x, "bdsmatrix") || inherits(x,
> "Matrix")
> if (ismat(kmat)  ) ....
> 
> (The second line is repeated multiple times for multiple arguments.  The ismat function is
> defined simply to save typing.)
> 
> The check log contains multiple instances of the lines below:
> 
> < Warning message:
> < In if (ismat(kmat)) { :
> <   the condition has length > 1 and only the first element will be used
> 
> I don't see how the error could arise, but if I know what as-cran is doing perhaps I can
> replicate it.
> 
>   >sessionInfo()
> R Under development (unstable) (2020-01-13 r77659)
> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
> Running under: Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS
> 
> Matrix products: default
> BLAS:   /usr/local/src/R-devel/lib/libRblas.so
> LAPACK: /usr/local/src/R-devel/lib/libRlapack.so
> 
> locale:
>    [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
>    [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=C
>    [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
>    [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
>    [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
> [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
> 
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods base
> 
> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
> [1] compiler_4.0.0 tools_4.0.0

You have ismat() defined in two places in the package.  In the 
definition in coxme.R, you've got a typo:

     ismat <- function (x) {
         inherits(x, "matrix") || inherits(x, "bdsmatrix") | inherits(x, 
"Matrix")
     }

Notice the "|" instead of "||".  I can't see how this would lead to the 
issue you saw, but it should be fixed.

It's not easy to say what --as-cran does, other than to look at the 
function that implements R CMD check.  That function is the huge 
tools:::.check_packages.  You can run it in an R session using

   options(warn = 2, error = recover)
   tools:::.check_packages(c("--as-cran", "coxme_2.2-14.tar.gz"))

When I do that I get a different error report; it reports this test instead:

    if(class(varlist) == "coxmevar")

That appears in a number of places in the coxme source, and clearly 
needs to be updated to use inherits().

Duncan Murdoch