[R-pkg-devel] Is R-Forge dead?

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> Achim Zeileis 
>>>>>     on Tue, 2 Jul 2024 01:05:07 +0200 (CEST) writes:

    > Kevin, R-Forge is still alive but there are problems with
    > the build queue as you noticed. The problems occurred
    > after R-Forge upgraded to R 4.4.0 - just as there was a
    > switch in the maintenance team at WU Wien.

    > The problem is with the Windows build/check tools which
    > work fine when run manually but either fail (if there is
    > compiled code in the package) or stall when run in batch
    > mode.

    > Jorge, the new member in the admin team at WU, has been
    > going through all the scripts with Uwe (Ligges) but they
    > haven't spotted the problem so far. I think that the next
    > step will be to migrate the Windows build/check processes
    > to the Win-Builder machine.

    > I hope that they will succeed in doing so in the next
    > weeks. Apologies for the inconvenience.

    > Best wishes, Achim

Thanks a lot, Achim,
for the update and explanation!

I maintain quite a few packages on R-forge,
enjoying the simplicity of svn (subversion) on the way.

For automatic building and checking,  some of you may be aware
that the R-OpenSci organization has hosted and sponsored the
"R-Universe" project https://ropensci.org/r-universe/,
implemented and made quite successful I think primarily by
Jeroen Ooms.   A main goal (I think) has been to *be* as
universal as possible, and provide a "portal" for "all" publicly
hosted R packages and not only foster to private company-owned
platforms such as github, but rather work with more general
"organizations" such as CRAN and BioC (each via their 'Meta
CRAN'), then also R-forge and many many more, see
    https://r-universe.dev/organizations/

Consequently, the R-forge packages are also all mirrored and
presented there, *and* also built and checked,
   --> https://r-forge.r-universe.dev/
... sometimes (somewhat confusingly to us, in one case) checking
against non-released versions of CRAN packages (instead of the stable
CRAN version)  which of course may be useful ((and I think is
similar to how R-forge works;  if there are released and
unreleased version of packages around, it's not easily
determinable *which* version should be used for tests of other
packages)).

Anyway, I was glad in one case that R-universe provided a built
version of the development version of one of my packages other
users could easily install.

Martin

PS:  I have not been a fan of r-universe, notably originally, as
it diverts attention away from R-project and CRAN, but then did
notice how useful it can be to the R users community, and how
well it has been maintained, hence these kudos!


    > On Tue, 2 Jul 2024, Kevin R. Coombes wrote:

    >> Hi,
    >> 
    >> I have been maintaining packages in R-Forge for many
    >> tears. Last week I sent an email to r-forge using r-project.org
    >> to report problems with the build process.  It appears
    >> that any changes I have pushed to R-Forge over
    >> approximately the last two months have resulted in the
    >> package remaining in the "Building" state, even though
    >> the logs suggest that the package built successfully on
    >> both LINUX and Windows. (Also, four of the six affected
    >> packages only included changes to the man pages to clean
    >> up NOTEs from the R cmd checks on old versions at CRAN,
    >> where the new versions now happily reside.) I have
    >> received no response nor acknowledgement to my email to
    >> R-Forge.
    >> 
    >> Assuming that R-Forge has finally succumbed to the
    >> ravages of entropy, does anyone have advice on creating a
    >> git project that contains multiple R packages? (I really
    >> don't want to have to create 20+ new git projects, one
    >> per package).
    >> 
    >> Best,    Kevin
    >> 
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