[R-pkg-devel] Rdmacros as Suggests rather than Imports

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

Hi James,

On 22 January 2021 at 14:29, James Pustejovsky wrote:
| I'm writing to see if anyone has suggestions for how to handle an issue I'm
| facing with the clubSandwich package (
| https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=clubSandwich; Github repo:
| https://github.com/jepusto/clubSandwich). The package documentation uses
| the fairly new package mathjaxr (https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=mathjaxr;
| Github repo: https://github.com/wviechtb/mathjaxr) so that the help
| packages can include mathjax formulas. Using mathjaxr requires adding it as
| a dependency (in Imports) and in the Rdmacros field.
| 
| I recently learned that the Debian GNU/Linux team that handles R packaging
| has trouble with the mathjaxr package, and consequently with any package
| that has mathjaxr as a dependency. Thus, I would like to make
| mathjaxr an optional feature, moving it from Imports to Suggests.
| However, Writing R Extensions specifies that RdMacros packages must be
| listed in Imports or Depends.
| 
| Does anyone have suggestions for a potential workaround for this situation
| (short of entirely removing the use of mathjaxr)?

That is what Duncan did with rgl, from where this arose. (It's all very
inside baseball by for embedded 'minified' js files Debian 'ftpmasters'
[essentially our version of the CRAN desk accept/reject] also require full
source of the javascript file, which is not unreasonable -- but a bit of a
pain pain). Wolfgang (for mathjaxr) knows about it, and "time permitting"
packaging of mathjaxr may change. In the meantime the easiest os for you to
not use mathjaxr (I don't think the help page rendering mechanism has
optionality here) or for your corresponding Debian maintainer (CC'ed) to
patch it out (which is what I had done for the first rgl release with it).

Dirk

-- 
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