[R] are R packages safe?

[Spencer Graves]

On 12/8/2016 12:08 PM, Dimitri Liakhovitski wrote:
> Thank you, Marc.
> That's helpful!
> I think, in this case it's mostly:
>
> That they are virus/malware free.
> And that they don't send out some info that they are not supposed to.


       Doing those things are absolutely against CRAN policies, but you 
should get one of the CRAN maintainers to tell you the extent to which 
they check these things.


       CRAN will reject a violation of these rules if they catch them, 
and they do scan for many possible problems.  For example, I don't know 
if they'd catch a call to "q()" in a package if that line of code was 
not exercised in any of the standard tests.  Even of they could catch 
that, I don't know if they'd catch "do.call(q, list())"


       Best Wishes,
       Spencer Graves
>
> Thank you!
> Dimitri
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 8, 2016 at 1:04 PM, Marc Schwartz <marc_schwartz at me.com> wrote:
>> On Dec 8, 2016, at 11:47 AM, Dimitri Liakhovitski
>> <dimitri.liakhovitski at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Guys,
>>
>> suddenly, I am being asked for a proof that R packages that are not
>> '"base" are safe. I've never been asked this question before.
>>
>> Is there some documentation on CRAN that discusses how it's ensured
>> that all "official" R packages have been "vetted" and are safe?
>>
>> Thanks a lot!
>>
>> --
>> Dimitri Liakhovitski
>>
>>
>>
>> Dimitri,
>>
>> You are going to need to define "safe".
>>
>> Also, note that the notion of "official R packages" is not defined, other
>> than for those that bear the copyright of The R Foundation (Base +
>> Recommended), as per:
>>
>>    https://www.r-project.org/certification.html
>>
>> That packages are available on CRAN does not infer, implicitly or
>> explicitly, that the packages are endorsed/certified/validated by any party.
>>
>> You can review the CRAN Policy here:
>>
>>    https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/policies.html.
>>
>> which provides a standardized framework for CRAN submissions.
>>
>> Does "safe" mean that they are virus/malware free?
>>
>> Does "safe" mean that they are extensively tested/validated, bug free and
>> yield documented evidence of consistent and correct results, possibly having
>> also been tested for "edge cases"?
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Marc Schwartz
>>
>>
>
>