[R-pkg-devel] CRAN submission struggle

[Ivan Krylov]

On Sat, 16 Dec 2023 19:41:16 +0200
Christiaan Pieterse <pietie.cjp.1908 using gmail.com> wrote:

> This .R file contained the Roxygen2 comments. (I was very unsure what
> comments to include in this so it might be wrong, I'm unsure)

If you like roxygen2 and would like to keep using it, you're welcome to
keep the roxygen2 comments in your R files. Just don't forget to re-run
roxygenise() every time you update them.

>    3. Included a DESCRIPTION file is the 'iopspackage' folder. (Once
> again I was very unsure what to include in this file so it might be
> wrong).

Does it help to follow the guide at
<https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-exts.html#The-DESCRIPTION-file>?
Start with the mandatory fields Package, Version, License,
Description, Title and Authors using R (to generate Author: and Maintainer:
from).

>    8. I checked the tar file using *R CMD check --as-cran
>    "iopspackage_2.1.0.tar.gz". *This yielded errors, warnings and
> notes which I don't know how to solve and suspect are due to me
> setting the file up wrong.

Can you show us the log from the check? It should be fine to copy &
paste the entries that don't say OK (i.e. NOTEs, WARNINGs, and ERRORs).

Most of what you'll need to fix is described in "Writing R Extensions"
(link above) and the CRAN policy at
<https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/policies.html>.

> I've been told before not to include my package as an attachment, so
> can someone please help me with the submission process?

Can you publish the code anywhere? Ideally, this place should provide
instant access to the latest version of every source code file inside
your package. The most popular option nowadays is GitHub, but it does
not have to be GitHub. Two GDPR-friendly alternatives are Codeberg and
SourceHut. If you don't like Git (which does take effort to learn),
there's R-Forge and Chiselapp.com. If you don't want to learn software
version control right now, any free web/file hosting will suffice as
long as you keep the files updated and accessible.

> It is a 10mb file

I think we've discussed this before. A 10-megabyte package mostly
consisting of example data is not a good fit for CRAN. It's possible to
use free Web hosting services to distribute data packages (see the
'drat' package and the function tools::writePACKAGES) separate from the
CRAN package that should mainly contain the code.

-- 
Best regards,
Ivan