[R-pkg-devel] Suggesting an archived package in the DESCRIPTION file

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 05/03/2024 5:58 a.m., Yohann Foucher wrote:
> Dear R-Members,
> 
> 
> I just have submitted an update of the ‘survivalSL' package because the last version depends on the ‘survivalmodels’ package, which has been recently archived.  In the DESCRIPTION file of the new version 0.93 of the ‘survivalSL' package, I've moved ‘survivalmodels' from "Depends" to the ‘Suggests'. I thought this would solve the problem. Indeed, the 'survivalSL’ package can function without the ‘survivalmodels’ package if the user does not include the related learner (survival neural network) in the learning ensemble. Nevertheless, the new version 0.93 was archived again.
> 
> I’m working on the estimation of a survival neural network without the ‘survivalmodels’ package but this developments will take a long time. During this period, do you have any idea to avoid the archiving of my package?

You could make a compatible version of `survivalmodels` available on a 
non-CRAN website, and refer to that website in the 
Additional_repositories field of DESCRIPTION.

It would be best if you fixed whatever issue caused survivalmodels to be 
archived when you do this.

Looking here: 
https://cran-archive.r-project.org/web/checks/2024/2024-03-02_check_results_survivalmodels.html
that appears very easy to do.  The source is here: 
https://github.com/RaphaelS1/survivalmodels/ .

Alternatively, you could just drop the functions that depend on 
survivalmodels completely, and drop it as a Suggested package.

Duncan Murdoch