[R-pkg-devel] Suggesting gurobi

[Balasubramanian Narasimhan]

Suggests" would trigger an attempt to install gurobi, which is not on CRAN.

We used "Enhances" for our CVXR  because

(1) None of the functionality in the package requires gurobi;

(2) Packages in "Enhances" are not required to check the package by CRAN.

Your package mirrors ours in these respects and so I would suggest going 
with "Enhances".

-Naras

On 6/4/21 12:35 PM, Noah Greifer wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have been working on adding an option for my users to use integer
> programming (a method of optimization) to enhance the results of a function
> in my package. There are several R packages on CRAN that perform integer
> programming, including Rglpk and Rsymphony. However, there is a commercial
> solver called Gurobi that dramatically outperforms all open-source solvers,
> and it comes with an R interface through the gurobi package. I want to
> allow my users to use Gurobi to perform the package actions.
>
> A potential issue is that the gurobi package is not on CRAN; it comes with
> an installation of the Gurobi software, which requires a license. I am not
> sure how to add gurobi to my Description file to satisfy CRAN's
> requirements. In CMD CHECK, I get the warning that the package is not
> available for checking. However, I have noticed some other packages do use
> gurobi just as I want to (i.e., as an option), such as CVXR
> <https://cran.r-project.org/package=CVXR> and designmatch
> <https://cran.r-project.org/package=designmatch>, which put gurobi in
> Enhances (though I would have thought it would belong in Suggests). It
> seems that neither of these packages passes the CRAN checks, though.
>
> I'm wondering what the best practices are for including gurobi in my
> package. To be clear, its use is optional and the package can be functional
> without it, but it greatly enhances performance so I want my users to be
> able to use it. Thank you!
>
> Noah Greifer
>
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>
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