[R-pkg-devel] CRAN archival: Does CRAN un-archive some packages automatically?

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 01/11/2023 12:30 p.m., Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
> I'm asking here to spare the CRAN Team a direct message, but also
> because the answer is of interest to others:
> 
> Consider a package PkgA that was archived on CRAN, because it fails
> checks and errors that were not corrected in time.  At the moment when
> package PkgA is archived, it will trigger automatic archiving of other
> CRAN packages that has a hard dependency on it. Say, packages PkgB and
> PkgC were archived automatically, because of their dependency on PkgA.
> 
> Question: If PkgA is at a later point revived on CRAN, will CRAN
> unarchive PkgB and PkgC automatically? Or, should the maintainers of
> PkgB and PkgC resubmit? If they have to resubmit, should they submit
> identical versions and tarballs as before, or do they have to bump the
> version?

I don't know the answer to your first question, but I'd guess "no".  The 
maintainers of PkgB and PkgC should have already resubmitted, demoting 
PkgA to a "Suggests:" dependency or dropping it completely.

If they chose not to do that, then at the hypothetical time when PkgA is 
revived, each of PkgB and PkgC would need full testing to see if they 
were passing the current versions of the CRAN checks with the new 
version of PkgA.  That's something for their maintainers to do, not CRAN.

Regarding your last question:  if it turns out the original version 
still passes with the new PkgA, then I think it's still better to bump 
the version number.  It would need an exception to the usual "new 
submissions need new version numbers" rule.  Exceptions waste CRAN's time.

Duncan Murdoch