[R-pkg-devel] Including Open-Source C Code in R Package

[Zhu, Zijie]

Hi Dirk and Duncan,

Many thanks for replying! I will definitely try drat and see how it works.

> I don't think so --- how could anyone use your package, if it is incomplete?
>
> You should get permission from the authors of the other package to
> release it under one of the allowed licenses.  Or distribute the whole
> thing on Github, or some other non-CRAN location.

And sorry, Duncan, that I didn't explain my situation very clearly.
I'm also co-author of the other R package. At the beginning, I
co-authored an R package that contains the open-source C model. I
tried to submit this package to CRAN, but the CRAN maintainer says the
license of that C model is not in mainstream and I should obtain a
written confirmation (which I failed, cuz the institution that wrote
the C code never responded.) So I tried to split the package into
halves, one half containing the C-model code and the other half
without C code. I intend to put the half without C code on Github,
while submitting the half with C code to CRAN. So I'm actually
co-author of both R packages that I referred to.

The .onLoad funciton above is trying to download the R package with C
code from Github, when users first install the R package without C
code from CRAN. So when user type install.packages("CRAN-part"), she
will also (unknowingly) call install_github("Github-part"). I am
concerned that CRAN maintainer will not be happy about this .onLoad
function and what it does.

Thanks,
Miller