[R-pkg-devel] help fixing CRAN package sos

[Spencer Graves]

Hello, All:


	  The sos package is failing some CRAN checks, complaining:[1]


LaTeX errors:
! Missing $ inserted.
<inserted text>
                 $
l.303 {\tt pspline_
                    checker} in the
! Emergency stop.
<inserted text>
                 $
l.303 {\tt pspline_
                    checker} in the
! ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!
--- failed re-building 'sos.Rnw'


	  I can NOT replicate these locally nor with GitHub action, and I 
failed to find 'psp' in 'sos.Rnw'.[2]  This raises two issue:


OBVIOUS:  What can I do to fix this error, or at least to understand it 
better?


SUBTLE:  How can I configure "github action", so it can replicate the 
errors reported on CRAN?


	  Thanks,
	  Spencer


[1]


https://cran.r-project.org


[2]


https://github.com/sbgraves237/sos


-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Re: CRAN package sos
Date: Sun, 14 May 2023 14:46:06 +0100
From: Prof Brian Ripley <ripley using stats.ox.ac.uk>
Reply-To: CRAN <CRAN using r-project.org>
To: Spencer Graves <spencer.graves using prodsyse.com>
CC: CRAN using R-project.org

<snip>


On 12/05/2023 13:03, Spencer Graves wrote:
> Hello, All:

You have just spammed my personal email address, contrary to the CRAN 
policy and done so deliberately and/or recklessly, overriding the 
Reply-To header.

>        Is MASS being withdrawn along with multiple other packages (mgcv, 
> survival, boot, lattice)?

Not so.  And that was a failure to do your own homework as you should 
have looked on CRAN to see that they are still available.

Further

options(repos=c(CRAN="http://cran.cnr.berkeley.edu"))

does not respect the user's choice of repository: that seems to make 
re-making it unreasonably slow.  On my very fast MacBook Pro

* checking re-building of vignette outputs ...^R
  [26s/265s] OK

so it is waiting 90% of the time.


>        That's responsible for 3 of the 4 'warnings' listed there.  The 
> warning for r-devel-linux-x86_64-fedora-gcc says "LaTeX errors:
> ! Missing $ inserted ... Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file 
> produced! ... Vignette re-building failed."
> 
> 
>        These all sound to me like operating system errors.  If there's 
> something here I should do, I could use help in understanding what.

Do read the message -- it is a LaTeX error in the LaTeX code your 
package's vignettes generates.

    LaTeX errors:
     ! Missing $ inserted.
     <inserted text>
      $
     l.303 {\tt pspline_
      checker} in the
     ! Emergency stop.
     <inserted text>
      $
     l.303 {\tt pspline_
      checker} in the
     ! ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!

Underlines need to be escaped in LaTeX.  And as your results depend on 
Internet downloads,

"Packages which use Internet resources should fail gracefully with an 
informative message if the resource is not available or has changed (and 
not give a check warning nor error)."

applies: you need to anticipate that the results might include underlines.

> 
> 
>        Thanks,
>        Spencer Graves
> m:  1-408-655-4567
> 
> 
> On 5/12/23 1:38 AM, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>> Dear maintainer,
>>
>> Please see the problems shown on
>> <https://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_results_sos.html>.
>>
>> Please correct before 2023-05-26 to safely retain your package on CRAN.
>>
>> The CRAN Team

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley using stats.ox.ac.uk
Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford