[R-pkg-devel] Best practice for accessing fat JAR Java application in R package

[Morgan Morgan]

Hi,

I am not knowledgeable on the topic but if it helps you I know the h2o
package as one pretty fat file(s):
https://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_results_h2o.html

It requires java as well.

Also found the following link on google:
https://thecoatlessprofessor.com/programming/r/size-and-limitations-of-packages-on-cran/

Hopefully someone else will be able to provide you with better guidance.

Best regards
Morgan

On Sat, 1 May 2021, 13:40 Leifeld, Philip, <philip.leifeld using essex.ac.uk>
wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I wrote an open-source Java software, which I release as a stand-alone
> JAR file. I also wrote an R package, which adds functionality and some
> wrapper functions for the JAR for use without GUI from R. It uses rJava
> for this purpose. So far, I released both the JAR and the R package on
> GitHub and included a function in the R package that would allow the
> user to download the latest JAR and store it in the package installation
> directory under java/.
>
> But this causes unreliability for several reasons. GitHub allows only so
> many downloads per time unit, which occasionally messes up testing and
> end user experience; users sometimes end up with incompatible versions;
> it adds an inconvenient step for the user etc. I was thinking it may be
> more reliable to bundle the two pieces together by including the JAR
> file in the /inst/java directory of the package sources. This would also
> allow me to initialize Java with the JAR file upon loading the package
> without asking the user to download or initialize anything.
>
> However, the JAR file depends on other open-source software in the form
> of JAR files packaged into my JAR file (so my JAR file is a "fat" JAR
> file). For example, I access SQLite databases as part of my Java
> program, and for this I need the SQLite JDBC JAR, which has about 7MB.
> This leads to a note during R CMD check, which, I guess, will prevent
> CRAN submission:
>
> N  checking installed package size ...
>       installed size is  9.1Mb
>       sub-directories of 1Mb or more:
>         java   8.1Mb
>
> As an alternative solution, I wrote a function that would download the
> correct version of the JAR file and store it in inst/java. This function
> would be executed in R/zzz.R during installation. I was hoping the
> freshly downloaded JAR file would then be copied from inst/java to java/
> in the installation directory of the package in the library path, but
> this does not seem to be the case. Even if it were copied to the desired
> location, the installed package size would still be too large and would
> yield a note.
>
> I would be grateful if somebody could suggest a best practice to deal
> with this problem. Should I aim to include the JAR or store it online?
> If include, how do I deal with the size limitation of the R package for
> CRAN? If store online, how do I deal with the unreliability of GitHub
> and other issues?
>
> Many thanks in advance,
>
> Philip
>
> --
> Philip Leifeld
> Professor, Department of Government
> University of Essex
> http://www.philipleifeld.com
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>

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