[R-pkg-devel] Suppressing long-running vignette code in CRAN submission

[John Harrold]

I ask myself the question: Who is the vignette for?  It does server two
purposes. One is testing but primarily it's for the users to learn how to
use a package. I think the testing is secondary, and if it slows down
installation or general usability I'd sacrifice the testing. If it's that
important, then the tests can be added explicitly in tests/.

On Tue, Oct 17, 2023 at 3:04 PM Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd using debian.org> wrote:

>
> On 18 October 2023 at 08:51, Simon Urbanek wrote:
> | John,
> |
> | the short answer is it won't work (it defeats the purpose of vignettes).
>
> Not exactly. Everything is under our (i.e. package author) control, and
> when
> we want to replace 'computed' values with cached values we can.
>
> All this is somewhat of a charade. "Of course" we want vignettes to run
> tests. But then we don't want to fall over random missing .sty files or
> fonts
> (macOS machines have been less forgiving than others), not to mention
> compile
> time.
>
> So for simplicity I often pre-make pdf vignettes that get included in other
> latex code as source. Works great, never fails, CRAN never complained --
> which is somewhat contrary to your statement.
>
> It is effectively the same with tests. We all want maximum test surfaces.
> But
> when tests fail, or when they run too long, or [insert many other reasons
> here] so many packages run tests conditionally.  Such is life.
>
> Dirk
>
>
> | However, this sounds like a purely hypothetical question - CRAN policies
> allow long-running vignettes if they declared.
> |
> | Cheers,
> | Simon
> |
> |
> | > On 18/10/2023, at 3:02 AM, John Fox <jfox using mcmaster.ca> wrote:
> | >
> | > Hello Dirk,
> | >
> | > Thank you (and Kevin and John) for addressing my questions.
> | >
> | > No one directly answered my first question, however, which was whether
> the approach that I suggested would work. I guess that the implication is
> that it won't, but it would be nice to confirm that before I try something
> else, specifically using R.rsp.
> | >
> | > Best,
> | > John
> | >
> | > On 2023-10-17 4:02 a.m., Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> | >> Caution: External email.
> | >> On 16 October 2023 at 10:42, Kevin R Coombes wrote:
> | >> | Produce a PDF file yourself, then use the "as.is" feature of the
> R.rsp
> | >> | package.
> | >> For completeness, that approach also works directly with Sweave.
> Described in
> | >> a blog post by Mark van der Loo in 2019, and used in a number of
> packages
> | >> including a few of mine.
> | >> That said, I also used the approach described by John Harrold and
> cached
> | >> results myself.
> | >> Dirk
> | >> --
> | >> dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd using debian.org
> | >> ______________________________________________
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> | >
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> |
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> --
> dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd using debian.org
>
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