[R-pkg-devel] What is best practice for handling false negatives on CRAN submission tests?

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 19/03/2022 8:14 a.m., Daniel Kelley wrote:
> I submitted oce-1.7.2 to CRAN two days ago, in order to address problems that were uncovered in R-devel/linux CRAN tests. (The new gcc-12 that is on some CRAN machines is handy at uncovering potential problems.)
> 
> This version followed two prior submissions I had made on that day, 1.7.0 and 1.7.1, in which I progressively removed more and more URLs in docs that were failing.  As you can see, I was following what I think is the rule, in bumping the version number with each submission.
> 
> Anyway, the email I got back from CRAN told me that oce-1.7.2 had failed initial tests.  However, the email makes it seem that those tests had actually been passed.  Therefore, I wrote back to suggest that this might be a false negative (see Appendix below for the CRAN email, and my response).
> 
> My question for this list relates to time.  Would I be sensible to wait a couple of weeks for a reply? I ask because the schedule would have oce being auto-removed from CRAN early next month, and I worry a bit about that happening because of an email that went missing, or because I was unclear on how to communicate with CRAN.

I don't think there's a hard and fast rule.  I'd wait longer than 2 
days, less than 2 weeks.  Maybe 1 week?

Duncan Murdoch

> 
> 
> # Appendix
> 
> I emailed the following at 3:53PM (Halifax time, i.e. UTC-3) on Mar 17, 2022.
> 
> ```
> 
> My submission of 'oce' version 1.7-2 was rejected, although I see that the two tests both give Status as OK. Therefore, I'm wondering whether this is a false positive, and am writing this email as instructed. (This is the third trial of a submission, which initially aimed to solve a problem that was discovered by gcc-12 on a debian test machine. The system caught two other problems during submission, which had not been flagged in local tests, on winbulder, or on rhub tests.)
> 
> Please accept my apologies if there is something that I am missing.
> 
> Many thanks, both in advance for this and more generally, for the CRAN system.
> 
> Dan Kelley / Department of Oceanography / Dalhousie University / Canada
> 
> On Mar 17, 2022, at 3:37 PM, ligges using statistik.tu-dortmund.de wrote:
> 
> CAUTION: The Sender of this email is not from within Dalhousie.
> 
> Dear maintainer,
> 
> package oce_1.7-2.tar.gz does not pass the incoming checks automatically, please see the following pre-tests:
> Windows: <https://win-builder.r-project.org/incoming_pretest/oce_1.7-2_20220317_190259/Windows/00check.log>
> Status: OK
> Debian: <https://win-builder.r-project.org/incoming_pretest/oce_1.7-2_20220317_190259/Debian/00check.log>
> Status: OK
> 
> Last released version's CRAN status: OK: 3, NOTE: 6, WARNING: 1, ERROR: 3
> See: <https://CRAN.R-project.org/web/checks/check_results_oce.html>
> 
> CRAN Web: <https://cran.r-project.org/package=oce>
> 
> Please fix all problems and resubmit a fixed version via the webform.
> If you are not sure how to fix the problems shown, please ask for help on the R-package-devel mailing list:
> <https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel>
> If you are fairly certain the rejection is a false positive, please reply-all to this message and explain.
> 
> More details are given in the directory:
> <https://win-builder.r-project.org/incoming_pretest/oce_1.7-2_20220317_190259/>
> The files will be removed after roughly 7 days.
> 
> *** Strong rev. depends ***: argoFloats dendroTools morphomap seacarb skyscapeR soundecology SWMPr vprr
> 
> Best regards,
> CRAN teams' auto-check service
> Flavor: r-devel-windows-x86_64
> Check: CRAN incoming feasibility, Result: NA
> Maintainer: 'Dan Kelley <Dan.Kelley using Dal.Ca>'
> 
> Flavor: r-devel-windows-x86_64
> Check: Overall checktime, Result: NOTE
> Overall checktime 14 min > 10 min
> 
> Flavor: r-devel-linux-x86_64-debian-gcc
> Check: CRAN incoming feasibility, Result: Note_to_CRAN_maintainers
> Maintainer: 'Dan Kelley <Dan.Kelley using Dal.Ca>'
> ```
> 
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