[R-pkg-devel] automated testing for an SSH tunneling package?

[Jonathan Lisic]

I don’t think there is any specific requirement for automated tests on CRAN; there 
is also no requirement on CRAN to have a windows version.  The current 
https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/ssh.utils/index.html
package certainly does not.  That being said, I’m always a fan of inclusion, and 
would love to see some R utilities on windows for ssh.

The official CRAN policy is:

Package authors should make all reasonable efforts to provide cross-platform portable 
code. Packages will not normally be accepted that do not run on at least two of the major 
R platforms. Cases for Windows-only packages will be considered, but CRAN may not be 
the most appropriate place to host them.


I would also agree that getting Jeroen’s package up and running would be great, 
but is admittedly a much steeper hill to climb. 

Cheers,

Jonathan 


> On Sep 16, 2016, at 6:25 PM, Bob Rudis <bob at rud.is> wrote:
> 
> I'm not sure where Jeroen is on this - https://github.com/jeroenooms/ssh -
> but it might make more sense to dovetail off of it than rely on binaries
> being available on systems. That's doable, but (IMO) fraught with peril.
> 
> On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 4:53 PM, William May <williamcmay at live.com> wrote:
> 
>> I wrote an SSH tunneling package (it's on Github here<
>> https://github.com/wmay/tunnelr>). It runs on Mac, Linux, and Windows, at
>> least in the environments I've been able to test. I would like to get it on
>> CRAN if it's possible, but writing automated tests for this package is
>> nightmarish.
>> 
>> Typically, connecting to a server through the package requires manually
>> entering a password, which I don't think I can automate. (I don't want to
>> allow the package to enter passwords itself for security reasons.) An
>> alternative is to set up public and private rsa keys so that no password is
>> required. That option also gets complicated.
>> 
>> I could imagine setting up a server solely for testing this, with a user
>> that has no password, though that sounds scary. But then what happens if
>> the server goes down?
>> 
>> A second challenge applies specifically to Windows, which is the platform
>> I'm most concerned about. I'm relying on PuTTY for SSH in Windows. Is there
>> a way for that to be tested on CRAN?
>> 
>> Should I even worry about CRAN testing for this? Will CRAN accept this
>> package without tests?
>> 
>> And I was surprised that an SSH tunneling package didn't already exist (I
>> found it really convenient to control SSH tunneling from within R). Is
>> there another reason it doesn't exist yet, or is it just the testing
>> challenges?
>> 
>> - Will
>> 
>>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>> 
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-package-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
>> 
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-package-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel