[R-pkg-devel] DESCRIPTION file question

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

Taylor,

I believe we have been over this at StackOverflow but you may by now have
deleted the question/

On 21 July 2023 at 20:51, taylor brown via R-package-devel wrote:
| I have a question about the DESCRIPTION file of an R package that has some c++ dependencies. 
| 
| This package of mine builds c++ code during an interactive R session, but
|  does not contain any source c++ in itself. The c++ files make reference to
|  some dependencies that are made available by other third party R packages.
|
| LinkingTo is the appropriate field for the DESCRIPTION file (usually) here, not Imports, but if If I remove the dependencies (BH and RcppEigen) from the Imports field, the code examples in the vignette will fail to build on a fresh machine. 
| 
| The NOTES in my build mention that, because I have no src/ directory, LinkingTo is ignored. Simultaneously, there is another note that mentions Imports is also excessive. 

As your package has no src/ directory and does no compilation itself, you do
not need / have no use for LinkingTo to provide the include/ directory of one
or more listed packages.

(If you have offer that compilation ability in a helper function you need to
tell the deal with it in the function. You can use `requireNamespace()` to
check if a package is present, warn or error if not, and compute the include/
directory location using R helper functions such as system.file().)

| It’s kind of a catch 22. It feels like my options are either add the Imports lines and ignore the NOTE, or add a superfluous src/ directory to silence the NOTE. Which option is the preferred one? Or is there a third?

I think all you need is in Writing R Extensions. For us to help you more a
concrete example, maybe even from a mock package, would help.

Cheers, Dirk

-- 
dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd using debian.org