[R-pkg-devel] --as-cran URL check

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 14 December 2015 at 19:46, Paul Gilbert wrote:
| I am having some trouble with a NOTE produced by an R-devel check of URL 
| references. The reference was
| 
|   \url{http://som.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/reports/themeF/2005/05F10/}
| 
| which the --as-cran check finds has moved and notifies about the 
| redirected address
| 
|  
| http://www.rug.nl/research/portal/publications/pub(d7d4ea3d-af1d-487a-b9b6-c0816994ef5a).html
| 
| My browser finds this, and does not distinguish it from
| 
|  
| http://www.rug.nl/research/portal/publications/pub%28d7d4ea3d-af1d-487a-b9b6-c0816994ef5a%29.html
| 
| However, I cannot get either of these forms of the new address to work 
| in the man page and/or CITATION file  \url{}. The first gives
| 
| Found the following (possibly) invalid URLs:
|    URL: 
| http://www.rug.nl/research/portal/publications/pub(d7d4ea3d-af1d-487a-b9b6-c0816994ef5a).html
|      From: man/estFAmodel.Rd
|            man/estTSFmodel.Rd
|            man/tsfa-package.Rd
|            inst/CITATION
|      Status: 500
|      Message: Internal Server Error
| 
| even though I can cut and paste that address from the error message into 
| my browser and it works fine. The second form results in a problem 
| parsing the Rd file, the end of the section is not recognized and for 
| the next section I get "unexpected section header '\examples'". I think 
| the percent signs cause the end of the line with the closing } to be 
| treated as a comment, but if I put the } on a new line the status 500 
| occurs. With the percent signs escaped in the second form I get the 
| status 500 error message as in the first form.
| 
| Is this a bug in the R-devel --as-cran URL check, or does anyone see 
| something I am missing?

For that reason, I (and some other folks that I talked to) ended up removing
URLs creating such reports from documentation.  The webchecker used by CRAN
in Vienna appears to be broken. It *should* follow redirect, yet it does not.

And if you can't beat'em ... you end up avoiding'em.  

Dirk

-- 
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org