[R-pkg-devel] Puzzling error from win-builder

[Ben Bolker]

    Without thinking about it very much, my first guess would be that 
this is a transient problem on win-builder, i.e. the caret package is 
temporarily unavailable for some reason (e.g. because some update step 
hung); a new version of the package was published *fairly* recently 
(2021-05-15), although I would find my explanation more compelling if 
the update was more recent (and if the CRAN page for caret wasn't 
showing that the Windows binaries have all been updated to the current 
version).

   As a hackish way to explore this further, you could find a different 
CRAN package that depends on caret, edit the DESCRIPTION file to 
substitute your e-mail address as maintainer, and submit it to 
win-builder (if you don't edit the DESCRIPTION then the package 
maintainer, not you, will get the e-mail saying that the build is done; 
I don't know if this is allowed by win-builder rules but even if not it 
seems like a minor transgression).

On 5/26/21 5:12 PM, Jonathan Gilligan wrote:
> I have a puzzling error from win-builder for a package.
> 
> My package is https://github.com/jonathan-g/datafsm, also 
> https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/datafsm. I am preparing a 
> bug-fix release to CRAN to fix an error that CRAN recently identified in 
> the previous release of this package (see 
> https://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_results_datafsm.html).
> 
> The package passes R CMD check with no errors or warnings, and one note 
> (harmless) on win-builder for R-devel 
> (https://win-builder.r-project.org/8mp9LN00YVw4/00check.log) and 
> R-oldrelease 
> (https://win-builder.r-project.org/1K21X458WtYt/00check.log), but for 
> R-release, win-builder has two errors in running tests and building a 
> vignette (https://win-builder.r-project.org/exK86Fkyir2s/00check.log), 
> all of which say the CRAN caret package is not available for Windows x64:
> 
>> * checking for unstated dependencies in 'tests' ... OK
>> * checking tests ...
>> ** running tests for arch 'i386' ... [7s] OK
>>    Running 'testthat.R' [6s]
>> ** running tests for arch 'x64' ... [6s] ERROR
>>    Running 'testthat.R' [6s]
>> Running the tests in 'tests/testthat.R' failed.
>> Complete output:
>>    > library(testthat)
>>    > library(datafsm)
>>    >
>>    > test_check("datafsm")
>>    == Failed tests 
>> ================================================================
>>    -- Error (test_mainfunc.R:7:9): evolve_model() returns correct type 
>> of object --
>>    Error: DLL 'caret' not found: maybe not installed for this 
>> architecture?
>>    Backtrace:
>>        x
>>     1. +-datafsm::evolve_model(cdata, cv = FALSE) test_mainfunc.R:7:8
>>     2. \-base::loadNamespace(x)
>>     3.   \-base::library.dynam(lib, package, package.lib)
>>    -- Error (test_mainfunc.R:14:3): evolve_model() returns warnings 
>> and errors ----
>>    Error: DLL 'caret' not found: maybe not installed for this 
>> architecture?
>>    Backtrace:
>>        x
>>     1. +-testthat::expect_warning(evolve_model(cdata, cv = FALSE), 
>> "did not supply a data.frame") test_mainfunc.R:14:2
>>     2. | \-testthat:::quasi_capture(enquo(object), label, 
>> capture_warnings)
>>     3. |   +-testthat:::.capture(...)
>>     4. |   | \-base::withCallingHandlers(...)
>>     5. |   \-rlang::eval_bare(quo_get_expr(.quo), quo_get_env(.quo))
>>     6. +-datafsm::evolve_model(cdata, cv = FALSE)
>>     7. \-base::loadNamespace(x)
>>     8.   \-base::library.dynam(lib, package, package.lib)
>>       [ FAIL 2 | WARN 0 | SKIP 0 | PASS 3 ]
>>    Error: Test failures
>>    Execution halted
>> * checking for unstated dependencies in vignettes ... OK
>> * checking package vignettes in 'inst/doc' ... OK
>> * checking re-building of vignette outputs ... [10s] WARNING
>> Error(s) in re-building vignettes:
>> --- re-building 'datafsm_introduction.Rmd' using rmarkdown
>> Quitting from lines 173-175 (datafsm_introduction.Rmd)
>> Error: processing vignette 'datafsm_introduction.Rmd' failed with 
>> diagnostics:
>> DLL 'caret' not found: maybe not installed for this architecture?
>> --- failed re-building 'datafsm_introduction.Rmd'
>>
>> --- re-building 'FRD_vignette.Rmd' using rmarkdown_notangle
>> --- finished re-building 'FRD_vignette.Rmd'
>>
>> SUMMARY: processing the following file failed:
>>    'datafsm_introduction.Rmd'
>>
>> Error: Vignette re-building failed.
>> Execution halted
> 
> My package declares the "caret" package as an import in DESCRIPTION, so 
> I am puzzled what this error from win-builder means and how to fix it. 
> If R CMD check got this far, and installed the package for testing 
> without reporting missing dependencies, why is it suddenly unable to use 
> the caret package for testing the package, but only for the x64 
> architecture? Is this something I am doing wrong, or is it a bug in 
> win-builder?
> 
> Is anyone else finding problems with win-builder reporting errors about 
> CRAN packages not being available?
> 
> For what it's worth, the package passes R CMD check with no errors or 
> warnings or notes under GitHub actions (Windows, MacOS, and Ubuntu), on 
> rhub (Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, MacOS, and Windows except for R-devel 
> under Windows, where R CMD check fails with a message about BioConductor 
> not having binaries for R 4.2, even though my package doesn't use any 
> BioConductor packages), and on my local Windows and Ubuntu boxes, so 
> this seems to be a problem specific to R-release under win-builder.
> 
> If anyone has any suggestions for how I can fix this problem and submit 
> the new release of my package to CRAN, I would be grateful.
> 
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