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

[Achim Zeileis]

On Tue, 2 Jul 2024, Martin Maechler wrote:

>>>>>> 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!

+1 Thanks for pointing to R-universe, Martin, indeed an excellent service!

An additional detail about the packages at:

https://R-Forge.R-universe.dev/

This are the development versions of the R-Forge packages that are already 
released on CRAN.

If anyone has R-Forge packages that are not (yet) released on CRAN and you 
want to deploy them via R-universe, then you can do so by setting up your 
own universe. I'm using that for many of my R-Forge packages, see

https://zeileis.R-universe.dev/

and

https://github.com/zeileis/zeileis.r-universe.dev

for the underlying configuration.

Best wishes,
Achim


>
>    > 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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