[Rd] R check false positive - multiple versions of a dependency

[Duncan Murdoch]

I'd say a NOTE is appropriate even if upper and lower limits are 
allowed, but the wording of the current note should be changed, e.g. 
your example should say

"Package listed more than once in Depends, Imports, Suggests, Enhances:
      ‘stats’"

If you really meant to do this, you can ignore the note, but I'd suspect 
multiple listings are more often an error than intentional, and that's 
what NOTEs are for.

There may still be a more serious bug here if one of the limits is 
ignored; I haven't checked that.

Duncan Murdoch

On 21/04/2021 6:57 a.m., Dénes Tóth wrote:
> 
> ----
> Disclaimer: I sent this report first to r-package-devel using r-project.org
> but it seems it has not been delivered to the list - re-trying to r-devel
> ----
> 
> Dear R maintainers,
> 
> Use case:
> Restrict the acceptable versions of an imported package (e.g., 'pkg') to
> a closed interval. That is, provide *both* pkg (>= min.version.nr), pkg
> (<= max.version.nr) under Imports.
> 
> Problem:
> Even though the package is an internal package, I want to have clean R
> CMD check results for QC reasons, and this seems impossible due to a bug
> in tools/R/QC.R/.check_package_description2.
> 
> Details:
> This is a quote from Writing R Extensions, 1.1.3 Package Dependencies:
> 
> "A package or ‘R’ can appear more than once in the ‘Depends’ field, for
> example to give upper and lower bounds on acceptable versions."
> 
> In reality, this statement seems untrue: 1) only R can appear more than
> once (even base packages like 'stats' trigger a NOTE in R CMD check); 2)
> Not only 'Depends', but other fields (Imports, Suggests, Enhances) can
> contain duplicated entries in the sense that the entries are processed
> as expected, but the check gives a NOTE.
> 
> Minimal reproducible example:
> In a (Linux) terminal, issue the following commands (note the Depends row):
> 
> #####
> mkdir -p pkgname
> echo "
> Depends: R (>= 3.1.0), R (<= 4.1.0)
> Package: pkgname
> Version: 0.5-1
> Date: 2021-04-15
> Title: My First Collection of Functions
> Author: Joe Developer [aut, cre],
>     Pat Developer [aut],
>     A. User [ctb]
> Maintainer: Joe Developer <Joe.Developer using some.domain.net>
> Description: A (one paragraph) description of what
>     the package does and why it may be useful.
> License: GPL (>= 2)
> " > pkgname/DESCRIPTION
> 
> R CMD build pkgname
> _R_CHECK_CRAN_INCOMING_REMOTE_=FALSE R CMD check pkgname_0.5-1.tar.gz
> --as-cran --no-manual
> #####
> 
> The commands above return with "Status: OK" - so far so good.
> 
> Now instead of restricting the R version, let us restrict the version of
> 'stats'. (This is the only change, see Depends.)
> 
> #####
> echo "
> Depends: stats (>= 0.0.0), stats (<= 10.0.0)
> Package: pkgname
> Version: 0.5-1
> Date: 2021-04-15
> Title: My First Collection of Functions
> Author: Joe Developer [aut, cre],
>     Pat Developer [aut],
>     A. User [ctb]
> Maintainer: Joe Developer <Joe.Developer using some.domain.net>
> Suggests: MASS
> Description: A (one paragraph) description of what
>     the package does and why it may be useful.
> License: GPL (>= 2)
> " > pkgname/DESCRIPTION
> R CMD build pkgname
> _R_CHECK_CRAN_INCOMING_REMOTE_=FALSE R CMD check pkgname_0.5-1.tar.gz
> --as-cran --no-manual
> #####
> 
> Now the status is "Status: 1 NOTE", and the note is:
> "Package listed in more than one of Depends, Imports, Suggests, Enhances:
>     ‘stats’
> A package should be listed in only one of these fields."
> 
> Possible fix:
> 1) I think the highlighted sentence in Writing R Extensions should read as:
> "A package or ‘R’ can appear more than once in the ‘Depends’ field, for
> example to give upper and lower bounds on acceptable versions. For
> packages, the same rule applies for ‘Imports’ and ‘Suggests’ fields (see
> later)."
> 
> 2) In .check_package_description2(),
> 'unique(allpkgs[duplicated(allpkgs)])' shall be replaced with a more
> elaborated check. BTW, that check appears twice in the function, where
> the first result is assigned to 'out' and is never used until 'out' gets
> re-assigned. See
> https://github.com/r-devel/r-svn/blob/0d65935f30dcaccfeee1dd61991bf4b1444873bc/src/library/tools/R/QC.R#L3553
> 
> If you agree this is a bug, I can create a formal bug report and
> probably create a patch, too.
> 
> Regards,
> Denes
> 
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