[R-pkg-devel] Proper CRAN way - How to handle dependency of java jar file?

[Rainer M Krug]

Thanks Duncan.

> On 23 Jun 2020, at 14:35, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan using gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Your assumption that .jar files are not allowed is wrong:  a number of packages contain them:  rscala, J4R, Rbgs, bartMachine, OpenStreetMap, ...  There's a specific mention about how to include them in the CRAN policy document:

That’s good to know.

> 
> "For Java .class and .jar files, the sources should be in a top-level java directory in the source package (or that directory should explain how they can be obtained)."

So a tet file in the inst/jar directory giving the link to the GitHub repo would be fine in this case?
 
> 
> If you still decide not to include your .jar file (maybe it is too big, for example),


I guess it would be stretching it a bit, as the jar file is 8.2 MB, and plantuml has regular continuous updates, so I would prefer to keep it dynamic.


> then I think your option 1 is unusable for those people who can't write to the library location because of permission problems. (Admin privileges are often necessary to install packages in the main library.)  Generally I think everyone can install packages somewhere, but users do really get confused when they have multiple library locations, possibly each containing a different version of a package.

So the suggested option would be to have a function, which 
1) ask the user to create a directory in the home folder 
2) download the jar file into that directory or, when no permission is granted, into the tmpdir()

Thanks, no major changes necessary for that,

Rainer
 

> 
> Duncan Murdoch
> 
> On 23/06/2020 8:18 a.m., Rainer M Krug wrote:
>> Hi
>> I have a package called `plantuml` (https://github.com/rkrug/plantuml) which converts plantuml code to UML graphs. It uses for this the java program https://plantuml.com which is Open Source.
>> As it is not allowed to distribute a binary with an R package, I use the approach of a function which downloads the jar file into the directory `system.file("jar/plantuml.jar", package = "plantuml”)`.
>> This works nicely, and at the moment, the function is called automatically before the plantuml.jar is used.
>> Now I would like to submit the package to CRAN. I can’t find the guidelines anymore, so I am asking here:
>> What is the appropriate way of handling this?
>> I can think of a at least two ways of making it obvious to the user, that a binary is downloaded:
>> 1) if the file plantuml.jar is not present, ask the user to run the function `updatePlantumlJar()` which downloads the jar to the original location in the package directory
>> 2) tell the user to download the file manually and to put it somewhere, where the package will find it
>> I would prefer the first version, as the plantuml.jar would be in the package directory, where usually nobody but the package is doing stuff.
>> Any suggestions on how I could make this “CRAN conform”?
>> Thanks a lot,
>> Rainer
>> --
>> Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)
>> Orcid ID: 0000-0002-7490-0066
>> Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies
>> University of Zürich
>> Office Y34-J-74
>> Winterthurerstrasse 190
>> 8075 Zürich
>> Switzerland
>> Office:	+41 (0)44 635 47 64
>> Cell:       	+41 (0)78 630 66 57
>> email:      Rainer.Krug using uzh.ch
>> 		Rainer using krugs.de
>> Skype:     RMkrug
>> PGP: 0x0F52F982
>> --
>> Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)
>> Orcid ID: 0000-0002-7490-0066
>> Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies
>> University of Zürich
>> Office Y34-J-74
>> Winterthurerstrasse 190
>> 8075 Zürich
>> Switzerland
>> Office:	+41 (0)44 635 47 64
>> Cell:       	+41 (0)78 630 66 57
>> email:      Rainer.Krug using uzh.ch
>> 		Rainer using krugs.de
>> Skype:     RMkrug
>> PGP: 0x0F52F982
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-package-devel using r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
> 

--
Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)

Orcid ID: 0000-0002-7490-0066

Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies
University of Zürich
Office Y34-J-74
Winterthurerstrasse 190
8075 Zürich
Switzerland

Office:	+41 (0)44 635 47 64
Cell:       	+41 (0)78 630 66 57
email:      Rainer.Krug using uzh.ch
		Rainer using krugs.de
Skype:     RMkrug

PGP: 0x0F52F982




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