[R-pkg-devel] Are import-export-only packages allowed on CRAN?

[Marc Schwartz]

> On Jul 6, 2015, at 5:47 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Richie,
> 
> On 5 July 2015 at 19:17, Richard Cotton wrote:
> | One piece of feedback that I received at useR was that the assertive
> | package is getting too big, and should be broken down into smaller
> | pieces.
> | 
> | I want to split the functionality into assertive.base,
> | assertive.types, and a few others, then have the assertive package as
> | a virtual package (suggestions for better terminology welcomed) that
> | just imports and reexports the contents of the underlying pieces.
> | 
> | That way end-users can can still type library(assertive) and have the
> | same behaviour as before, and package developers who worry about
> | having lightweight dependencies can just use the parts that they need.
> | 
> | Before I do the refactoring, I wanted to check that it is OK to have a
> | package without any of its own content (other than vignettes) on CRAN.
> | Is it OK?
> 
> That is a pure CRAN question; maybe someone from CRAN wants to chime in or
> else you need to ask directly.
> 
> Greg Warnes has/had such a meta package (which I look after in Debian as a
> still-existing-there whole and componentds), and Henrik does too.  What **I
> think** the practice is now discouraged somewhere in WRE or CRP.  But no
> direct reference, sorry,
> 
> Dirk


If you are referring to a package “bundle”, they were deprecated in R 2.10.0 and put into defunct status in R 2.11.0. That is from the NEWS file:

  https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/doc/NEWS.2

There is no longer any reference to them in R-Exts.

Greg’s “gregmisc” bundle is no longer active on CRAN, in deference to using his component packages directly.


Regards,

Marc Schwartz