[R-pkg-devel] What to do when a dependency falls off CRAN

[David Winsemius]

When I attempt to install it the error indicates that the maxent package 
is not available. Attempts to install that package fail with more errors 
than can fit on an Rstudio console, so I cannot even scroll to see the 
first error.

You could simply remove the dependency on that package if your 
application doesn't require the maxent algorithm. Most of the RTextTools 
package is R code.


-- 

David Winsemius



On 3/24/19 1:00 PM, Neal Fultz wrote:
> One of my clients has a shiny app which depends on RTextTools, which was
> dropped from CRAN for lack of maintenance.
>
> What would you all recommend in this situation? Here's a couple options I
> could think of:
>
> 1) Vendor the orphaned package - we are doing this for now. I'm not a fan
> of this, because then there's a mix of GPL-2, GPL-3, Apache 2.0 and
> proprietary code all in one repo, and because it might encourage other
> developers to write monolithic, non-modular code. At least when we find
> bugs  we can fix them.
>
> 2) Install from CRAN archive instead of CRAN -  good for not having to
> carry around third party code in our repo, but I'd expect this to break
> with R 3.6, as the package hasn't rolled forward? Also no good way to fix
> bugs.
>
> 3) Adopt package, push fixed one to CRAN - not sure what the exact process
> is for un-orphaning, or if I would want to commit to maintaining it without
> knowing more about why it was dropped and how much work it is to get it
> passing. Eg if it were pathological solaris memory errors, I might have to
> pass. Are there ways to see old automated CRAN checks on a package that was
> abandoned? This approach obviously would benefit the community, but this is
> probably not billable work.
>
> 4) Rewrite - I could do this, but it's probably tedious, weeks of work, and
> my client may not want to pay for it; they also may not be interested in
> sharing it back if they did.
>
> 5) Find another package - then I have to rewrite the "application" code
> instead of the "library" code - also sounds tedious, days instead of weeks,
> but more likely to be billable.
>
> This topic has come up a few times in the past, but I would like to hear
> your current opinions given that CRAN is much more rigorous and automated
> now.
>
> v/r
>
> Neal Fultz
>
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>
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