[R-pkg-devel] CRAN rules re. web scraping?

[Spencer Graves]

       Thanks very much to Iñaki Ucar, Adam H Sparks, and Roy 
Mendelssohn for their replies that helped me understand what I needed to 
do to fix problems identified in the CRAN Checks.  I believe that those 
problems are not fixed in the development version of Ecfun available at 
"https://github.com/sbgraves237/Ecfun".  The package still needs more 
work, but I will make Prof. Ripley's Feb. 4 deadline.


       Thanks again,
       Spencer Graves


On 2020-01-23 01:55, Iñaki Ucar wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Jan 2020 at 02:49, Spencer Graves
> <spencer.graves using effectivedefense.org> wrote:
>> Hello, All:
>>
>>
>> GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS:
>>
>>
>>         * First the good news:  I heard from Brian Ripley;  see below.
>> His web site says, "He retired in August 2014 on grounds of ill health."
>> (http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/)  I was pleased to see that he seems
>> to be well enough to send me the email below.
>>
>>
>>         * BAD NEWS:  My Ecfun package is violating current CRAN rules
>> regarding "not writing anywhere in the file space".  (See below.)
>>
>>
>> QUESTION:
>>
>>
>>         How do you suggest I respond to this?
>>
>>
>>         It's hard for me to fix, because I cannot replicate the error and
>> I don't understand the rules Prof. Ripley is trying to enforce. The
>> "CRAN Package Check Results for" this package show an error on 1
>> platform (r-devel-linux-x86_64-fedora-gcc), NOTEs on 3 platforms
>> (Fedora-clang and Debian), and "OK" on 9 others.  I can program selected
>> tests not to run on CRAN, e.g., with (!fda::CRAN()).
>>
>>
>>         However, I suspect I should be able to do better than that.
>>
>>
>>         Suggestions?
> The message from Prof. Ripley is crystal-clear, and exposes two issues
> (Internet access, writing files) that have been discussed many times
> in this list. A quick scan of the CRAN policy [1] yields:
>
> - Packages which use Internet resources should fail gracefully with an
> informative message if the resource is not available (and not give a
> check warning nor error).
>
> - Packages should not write in the user’s home filespace (including
> clipboards), nor anywhere else on the file system apart from the R
> session’s temporary directory.
>
> [1] https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/policies.html
>
> Iñaki
>
>>         Thanks,
>>         Spencer Graves
>>
>>
>> p.s.  The development version of this package is available at
>> "https://github.com/sbgraves237/Ecfun".
>>
>>
>> https://cloud.r-project.org/web/checks/check_results_Ecfun.html
>>
>>
>> -------- Forwarded Message --------
>> Subject:        CRAN package Ecfun
>> Date:   Tue, 21 Jan 2020 21:26:02 +0000
>> From:   Prof Brian Ripley <ripley using stats.ox.ac.uk>
>> Reply-To:       CRAN <CRAN using r-project.org>
>> To:     Spencer Graves <spencer.graves using effectivedefense.org>
>> CC:     CRAN <CRAN using r-project.org>
>>
>>
>>
>> This has been intermittently failing its checks for a week: different
>> check runs failed (in the 24h prior to) the 14th, 15th, 17th and today.
>> The current failure is
>>
>> Check: examples
>> Result: ERROR
>> Running examples in ‘Ecfun-Ex.R’ failed
>> The error most likely occurred in:
>>
>>   > ### Name: read.testURLs
>>   > ### Title: Read a file produced by testURLs
>>   > ### Aliases: read.testURLs
>>   > ### Keywords: IO
>>   >
>>   > ### ** Examples
>>   >
>>   > # Test only 2 web sites, not the default 4,
>>   > # and test only twice, not the default 10 times:
>>   > tst <- testURLs(c(
>> + PVI="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_Partisan_Voting_Index",
>> + house="http://house.gov/representatives"),
>> + n=2, maxFail=2)
>> 1
>> 1579634784, PVI, TRUE 0.828
>> 1579634785, house, FALSE 0.051
>> 1579634785, house, FALSE 0.048
>> 2
>> 1579634785, PVI, TRUE 0.043
>> 1579634785, house, FALSE 0.11
>> 1579634785, house, FALSE 0.035
>>   >
>>   > # The above should have created a file 'testURLresults.csv'
>>   > # in the working directory. Read it.
>>   >
>>   > dat <- read.testURLs()
>> Error in read.table(file = file, header = header, sep = sep, quote =
>> quote, :
>> more columns than column names
>> Calls: read.testURLs -> read.csv -> read.table
>>
>> That does not conform to the policy on Internet access, not least as no
>> attempt is made to check if the file was created, let alone that it has
>> the expected layout. Nor does it conform to the policy on not writing
>> anywhere in the file space (and that shows on its CRAN results page too).
>>
>> Please correct ASAP and before Feb 4 to safely retain the package on CRAN.
>>
>> --
>> Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley using stats.ox.ac.uk
>> Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford
>>
>>
>>          [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
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