On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 10:34 AM, Federico Calboli <f.calboli@imperial.ac.uk
> wrote:
[...]

>
> That's as interesting as the English language makes it -- please note of
> the expression 'should' as opposed to 'must', and the list of three options
> of R versions.
>

Well, my interpretation is that package maintainers are expected to make an
effort and check the package with R-devel. If they cannot for some reason,
e.g. they cannot install R-devel, then R-patched or R-release.

> Are you a CRAN maintainer?
>
> I maintain two packages on CRAN, if that's what you're asking.


No, that's not what I am asking.

>
> > I guess you were just lucky so far. Most packages are small and not
> affected by changes between R-release and R-devel. But some of them are.
> >
> > Also, R-devel typically has more rigorous package checks than R-release.
>
> Does it?
>

E.g. in current R-devel:

    * R CMD check reports namespaces imported _via_ ::: calls,
      including where this is unnecessary because :: would do or the
      code is in the namepace being imported from.

(http://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/NEWS)

> My package was delayed several times because it did not pass checks in
> R-devel (it did in R-release). I guess this happened to other packages as
> well, hence the sentence above was included in the policies.
>
> I presume that the issue is this: some packages are written solely in R,
> hence, unless one uses a particular and outdated syntax, there are no
> differences between R-devel and and R-current, whereas packages that call
> C/C++/Fortran code are subject to the vagaries of compilers and operating
> systems, and using R-devel should help future proofing the package, while
> maintaing compatibility with R-current.
>

Partially, but not completely. You can have issues with R code (or even the
manual!) as well, see above: if you have an unneeded ::: in your R code,
then it will pass the check in R-release, but not in R-devel.

Or, this one was new in R-3.0.2:

    * R CMD check --as-cran checks the line widths in usage and
      examples sections of the package Rd files.

So again, back when this was only included in R-devel, your package with
too long lines in the manual page examples passed the check on R-release,
but not on R-devel.

Gabor

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