[R-pkg-devel] Best way to restore an archived CRAN package

[Ivan Krylov]

В Sun, 30 Oct 2022 16:56:03 +0900
"Stefan Angrick" <contact using stefanangrick.net> пишет:

> Writing code to digest the new data format is straightforward, so I'd
> like to bring the package back. Unfortunately I'm unable to reach the
> original author, so I'm unsure how to proceed.
> 
> Does CRAN allow for people other than the original author to bring
> back a package?

According to the CRAN policy [*], it should be possible to submit the
fixed package under the original name with an explanation that the
previous maintainer is unavailable:

>> Explain any change in the maintainer’s email address and if possible
>> send confirmation from the previous address (by a separate email to
>> CRAN-submissions using R-project.org) or explain why it is not possible.

Disclaimer: I've never done this myself.

For the record, the author's GitHub and Twitter accounts are trivial to
find; there is a bit of activity in the former (only once in 2022), and
the last update in the latter was in 2020.

> In either case, how would the original package author be acknowledged?

Make sure to mention Eric Persson in the Authors: field of the
DESCRIPTION file as a full author, but not the maintainer.

You will also need to make sure that the examples never crash, even if
there's no connection to the Internet, which may have been part of the
original reason the package had been archived.

-- 
Best regards,
Ivan

[*] https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/policies.html