[Rd] Proposal to limit Internet access during package load

[Iñaki Ucar]

El mar., 27 sept. 2022 18:42, Blätte, Andreas <andreas.blaette using uni-due.de>
escribió:

> Dear all,
>
> my apologies for a dull question. I think I do understand that unnoticed
> Internet access requires scrutiny and a more explicit approach.
>
> But I am not sure how this would impact on the practice on many Windows
> machines to download static libraries from one of the rwinlib repositories?
> See https://github.com/rwinlib, an approach taken by quite a few packages
> (src/Makevars.win triggers tools/winlibs.R for downloading a static
> library).
>
> I am asking because a package I maintain (RcppCWB) uses the approach, and
> am not sure whether and how the discussion has addressed this scenario. It
> may not be covered by Iñakis initial three scenario?


AFAIK, packages should compile on CRAN with the distribution of packages
that CRAN has for Windows, and thus offline. Then the majority of Windows
users just download precompiled binaries.

The rwinlib stuff is a nice to have feature for power users compiling their
own packages. But yet again those power users could enable Internet access
with this hypothetical flag I proposed.

Iñaki

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