[R-pkg-devel] CRAN policies with regards to runnable examples

[Mark van der Loo]

My experience is somewhat similar to that of Hong Ooi.

An initial submission got refused. During resubmission I explained the
necessity of \dontrun{} in certain cases and it was accepted. So the basic
policy here is 'comply or explain'.

>From now on, when I need to place a \dontrun{} anywhere, I will at initial
submission already use the 'Optional Comment' box to document why each
\dontrun{} is necessary. Based on my earlier experiences, this seems
reasonable and also the fastest way to publication.

Best,
Mark







On Wed, Oct 2, 2019 at 5:31 AM Hong Ooi via R-package-devel <
r-package-devel using r-project.org> wrote:

> Hm, up to now my AzureR packages haven't met with any issues, and they are
> basically API wrappers.
>
> I did have one reviewer ask for runnable examples when I submitted one
> package, but replying and pointing out the issues you mention cleared
> things up. I did cc Uwe Ligges in the reply, who approved the other
> packages in the first place -- the other reviewer probably just wasn't
> aware that I'd cleared things with Uwe previously.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: R-package-devel <r-package-devel-bounces using r-project.org> On Behalf
> Of Jim Hester
> Sent: Wednesday, 2 October 2019 3:37 AM
> To: R Package Development <r-package-devel using r-project.org>
> Subject: [R-pkg-devel] CRAN policies with regards to runnable examples
>
> CRAN reviewers have somewhat recently been requesting that new submissions
> have runnable examples. This is in general a good recommendation, but the
> reviewers seem to apply this policy unconditionally, and there are certain
> classes of packages where this is either extremely cumbersome or impossible
> to do.
>
> Two in particular are packages which wrap web APIs and packages containing
> shiny applications. Even the most robust APIs will inevitably have network
> failures, causing spurious failures on CRAN's machines, and often the APIs
> require credentials to access, which won't be available on the build
> machines. Shiny applications block the R process and require user
> interaction in a browser to function, they cannot really be run
> non-interactively.
>
> In these cases it seems appropriate to put examples in a `\dontrun{}` or
> `\donttest{}` block, and this is what is suggested by writing R extensions.
> However CRAN reviewers have refused to accept packages taking this approach.
>
> If these workarounds are not acceptable what _does_ CRAN want package
> authors to do in these cases?
>
> Jim
>
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