[R-pkg-devel] Handling Not-Always-Needed Dependencies?

[Uwe Ligges]

On 03.08.2016 17:17, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
>
> On 3 August 2016 at 16:21, Uwe Ligges wrote:
> |
> |
> | On 03.08.2016 16:14, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> | >
> | > On 3 August 2016 at 16:00, Uwe Ligges wrote:
> | > | On 03.08.2016 14:24, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> | > | > Then again, users of TravisCI know that just toggling
> | > | >
> | > | > _R_CHECK_FORCE_SUGGESTS_=FALSE
> | > |
> | > | I was travelling, hence a delayed response:
> | > |
> | > | Why users of TravisCI? It is documented in the manual. Setting it to
> | >
> | > Because Travis breaks your check as it works in a cleanroom with only the
> | > specified packages installed. As it (and that is the gist of my argument)
> | > should ...
> |
> | No, because if I suggest a package, I want to check also the code that
> | uses a suggested package. So I have to have the package installed.
>
> But then you are treating Suggests as Depends and installing irregardless.

Yes, because I want to check all the runtime code on CRAN and not only 
subsets.


>
> | > No, CRAN could just flip that toggle and run once.
> |
> | I do not get it: It won't make much of a difference because I have most
> | packages installed. It is only a diffrence for suggested packages that
>
> Which is a normal shortcut to make your life easier ... but not what other
> systems do. Travis CI runs start from scratch with an empty base. So does
> Debian for package build (and for subsequent tests such as the
> reproducibility tests). In each case only listed packages get installed.

Yes, I'd install install time dependencies for the installtion 
procedures and all dependencies for the check part.


> When we let R do its business Suggests is (currently) interpreted as
> Depends.

No, as we check installtion without suggetsed packages.


> I continue to claim that is not what it is for.
>
> As Thomas pointed out, Suggests: seems to be overloaded already to two
> distinct use cases.


Yes, and I know that a package should work without the suggestes 
installed, we do not disagree there.



> | are not available for my platform, and toggling it means checks always
> | fail then.
> |
> |
> | > What Duncan suggested was (as I understand it an empirically-driven
> | > assessment of what it would take to get from here (set to FALSE, tolerate bad
> | > Policy) to there (set to TRUE, IMHO better Policy adherence).
> |
> | You do not understand the environment variable, I believe.
>
> That is of course entirely possibly but it also seems that some of us in this
> discussion are continuously talking past each other. I tried to make my case
> but seemingly failed to explain it clearly enough.


So we agree that it would be nice to test with and without installed 
suggested packages? And the checks should give fine results in both 
cases, right?

Best,
Uwe