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

[Ralf Stubner]

On 24.03.19 21:00, Neal Fultz wrote:
> 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.

How about asking your client if they are willing to (partially) fund
somebody (does not have to be you) for getting the package back on CRAN?
They could be added to the DESCRIPTION in turn. And it might be cheaper
for them than rewriting the library or the application.

As for process: I think you basically upload a new version with higher
version number and updated "Maintainer" field. I have done this once for
tikzDevice, but that was only orphaned and not archived.

As for assessing the risks: Often the old checks are available for some
time after archiving, but I cannot find them in this case. Running "R
CMD check" on the two latest tarballs reveals only some NOTEs, though,
the most serious one from my point of view is usage of 'rand()' via
'random_shuffle()'
https://github.com/cran/maxent/blob/master/src/sgd.cpp#L77.

Greetings
Ralf

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Ralf Stubner
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