[R-pkg-devel] clarification about missing suggested packages.

[Uwe Ligges]

On 07.07.2021 00:51, Ben Bolker wrote:
> 
>    We are working on a resubmission of a package 
> (https://github.com/glmmTMB/glmmTMB/issues/721 for people who want all 
> the gory details). Our last hurdle is that one of the packages in 
> "Suggests:", DHARMa, is currently unavailable on Solaris, even though it 
> in good standing on CRAN 
> <https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/DHARMa/index.html>. (This stems 
> from a circular dependency: DHARMa can't be built on Solaris because the 
> _previous_ version of glmmTMB, which DHARMa imports, had a bug on 
> Solaris ...)
> 
>    We have been testing on r-hub's solaris platform, where DHARMa is 
> similarly unavailable. We can only pass tests if we set 
> _R_CHECK_FORCE_SUGGESTS_=false; otherwise we get an error that says some 
> suggested packages are missing.
> 
>    It is my understanding that the CRAN maintainers can either
> 
>     * test with _R_CHECK_FORCE_SUGGESTS_=false and yell at us if we have 
> used any missing/unavailable packages unconditionally or
> 
>     * test with _R_CHECK_FORCE_SUGGESTS_=true and ensure that all 
> suggested packages are installed
> 
> but that it would be unreasonable to reject package A because it has a 
> Suggests: dependency on package B that is in good standing on CRAN but 
> is not available on a particular CRAN testing platform, as long as 
> package A only uses package B conditionally.

Yes.

Best,
Uwe Ligges


>    Thoughts/opinions/evidence?
> 
>    cheers
>      Ben Bolker
> 
> ---
>  From the current CRAN policy:
> 
>      Packages on which a CRAN package depends should be available from a 
> mainstream repository: if any mentioned in ‘Suggests’ or ‘Enhances’ 
> fields are not from such a repository, where to obtain them at a 
> repository should be specified in an ‘Additional_repositories’ field of 
> the DESCRIPTION file (as a comma-separated list of repository URLs) or 
> for other means of access, described in the ‘Description’ field.
> 
>      A package listed in ‘Suggests’ or ‘Enhances’ should be used 
> conditionally in examples or tests if it cannot straightforwardly be 
> installed on the major R platforms. (‘Writing R Extensions’ recommends 
> that they are always used conditionally.)
> 
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