[R-sig-Geo] Error in CRS("EPSG:4326") : no arguments in initialization list

[Roger Bivand]

On Thu, 29 Apr 2021, Tomislav Hengl wrote:

>
> Thanks Roger. If I understand correctly, I should simply replace 
> 'CRS("EPSG:4326")' with 'CRS("+proj=longlat +datum=WGS84 +no_defs")'. 
> Otherwise the EPSG codes should work in R with any version correct?

No, just assign "+proj=longlat +datum=WGS84 +no_defs", no CRS(), no 
CRSargs() at all, so preventing CRS() reaching out through rgdal to PROJ. 
It probably shouldn't be canned anyway, but should rather be generated at 
run time not install time (and CRSargs() should be deprecated as it 
removes WKT2 representations). Note that +datum=WGS84 is very imprecise, 
as it varies by epoch, and is from EPSG 10 a datum ensemble rather than a 
datum.

EPSG codes given as CRS("EPSG:4326") work sp >= 1.4 and rgdal >= 1.5 with 
PROJ >= 6 and GDAL >= 3. The puzzle here is how CRS() mistakes the setting 
and tries to retrieve "EPSG:4326" from PROJ < 6.

Roger

>
>
> On 4/28/21 8:48 PM, Roger Bivand wrote:
>>  Tom,
>>
>>  Your package code itself runs lots of stuff in R/AAA.R that it doesn't
>>  need to. Here you could simply put the output string of:
>>
>>>  rgdal::CRSargs(sp::CRS("EPSG:4326"))
>>  [1] "+proj=longlat +datum=WGS84 +no_defs"
>>
>>  instead of going out to sp/rgdal/PROJ. In this case, sp and rgdal
>>  shouldn't let you do this on a system running PROJ 5.2.0 (and I'll look
>>  at that), but your work-around is the bare Proj4 string, which is the
>>  same in any case. The error message is from PROJ, returned from rgdal
>>  to sp. If you want to condition on PROJ version, you can do that, but
>>  instantiating CRS is costly, and here lazy-loading is trying to save
>>  time by pre-filling the value.
>>
>>  If this isn't enough, please let me know and I'll install the same PROJ
>>  and GDAL versions as used for Solaris checks locally, and try to
>>  resolve the problem in those packages. That will however take time. I'm
>>  assuming that sp and rgdal are the current CRAN versions 1.4-5 and
>>  1.5-23 on Solaris, both of those pass on that platform.
>>
>>  Hope this helps,
>>
>>  Roger
>>
>>  On Wed, 28 Apr 2021, Tomislav Hengl wrote:
>> 
>>>
>>>  Hi Roger et al,
>>>
>>>  We are experiencing some problems with committing plotKML to CRAN.
>>>  Automated check reports:
>>>
>>>  "Error in CRS("EPSG:4326") : no arguments in initialization list"
>>>
>>>  See:
>>>
>>>  https://www.r-project.org/nosvn/R.check/r-patched-solaris-x86/plotKML-00install.html 
>>>
>>>  https://github.com/Envirometrix/plotKML/issues/5
>>>
>>>  I assume it has to do with the proj / rgdal versions? Should I switch
>>>  to using again CRS("+init=epsg:4326")? Seems that different operating
>>>  systems now have different issues.
>>>
>>>  On R-forge plotKML installs without problems:
>>>
>>>  https://r-forge.r-project.org/R/?group_id=1106
>>>
>>>  _______________________________________________
>>>  R-sig-Geo mailing list
>>>  R-sig-Geo using r-project.org
>>>  https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-geo
>>>
>> 
>

-- 
Roger Bivand
Emeritus Professor
Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics,
Postboks 3490 Ytre Sandviken, 5045 Bergen, Norway.
e-mail: Roger.Bivand using nhh.no
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2392-6140
https://scholar.google.no/citations?user=AWeghB0AAAAJ&hl=en