[R-pkg-devel] CRAN pretest archived because of 2 NOTEs

[Gertjan van den Burg]

While waiting to get this message posted to the list, I've solved the 
problem by copying the stdlib rand() and srand() functions into my 
package under a different name. This makes the check pass and ensures my 
RNG does not interfere with R's RNG.

I do think that if this NOTE causes immediate dismissal of a package, it 
shouldn't be a NOTE but an ERROR. Otherwise it just leads to a lot of 
wasted time waiting for a reply from the maintainers to respond to the note.

> Dear all,
>
> My CRAN submission doesn't pass the pre-tests and gets archived. I've
> emailed cran-submissions at r-project.org explaining that these are false
> positives, but since I haven't heard back in 10 days I don't think anyone
> read that. Same thing for the submission comments (which also explained it).
>
> The first note is:
>
> * checking CRAN incoming feasibility ... NOTE
> Maintainer: ‘Gertjan van den Burg <gertjanvandenburg at gmail.com>’
>
> New submission
>
> Possibly mis-spelled words in DESCRIPTION:
>    GenSVM (8:18, 10:61, 15:2, 16:26, 19:11)
>    Multiclass (4:22)
>    SVMs (14:25, 15:42)
>    misclassifications (11:49)
>    multiclass (8:53, 14:14, 15:31)
>
>
> These words are not mis-spelled, so this is a false positive.
>
> The second note is:
>
> * checking compiled code ... NOTE
> File ‘gensvm/libs/gensvm_wrapper.so’:
>    Found ‘rand’, possibly from ‘rand’ (C)
>      Objects: ‘gensvm/src/gensvm_cv_util.o’, ‘gensvm/src/gensvm_init.o’,
>        ‘gensvm/lib/libgensvm.a’
>    Found ‘srand’, possibly from ‘srand’ (C)
>      Objects: ‘gensvm/src/gensvm_train.o’, ‘gensvm/lib/libgensvm.a’
>
> Compiled code should not call entry points which might terminate R nor
> write to stdout/stderr instead of to the console, nor use Fortran I/O
> nor system RNGs.
>
> See ‘Writing portable packages’ in the ‘Writing R Extensions’ manual.
>
>
> This is probably why the package is rejected. I have a valid use case for
> using rand() and srand(): I'm trying to maintain compatibility of this
> package with the corresponding Python package. By using rand en srand users
> can reproduce models in both languages.
>
> Does anyone have any ideas on how I can get the package excepted to CRAN?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Gertjan van den Burg
>