On 8/29/2006 2:24 PM, Paul Gilbert wrote: > Seth Falcon wrote: > >>Duncan Murdoch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> >> >>>On 8/29/2006 11:58 AM, Seth Falcon wrote: >>> >>> >>>>I think there is an important distinction between a dependency needed >>>>for the package to function and a dependency needed to demonstrate >>>>said functionality via an example or vignette. The former is what >>>>Depends is about, the latter is something else (Suggests). >>>> >>>> >>>Yes, that's a good point, especially with vignettes. Only the package >>>author needs to be able to run them. >>> >>> >> >>Yes, but just to keep things clear: the value of vignettes is that >>users can follow along. So the ability to programatically identify >>the extra required packages is valuable. >> >> >> >>>But maybe examples should be considered broken if they don't >>>work. Users should be able to expect example(foo) not to generate an >>>error. Package authors should wrap optional examples in code like if >>>(require(...)). >>> >>> > This is a work around that is ok for the developer's testing and to > prevent failure on CRAN, and I use it. But, other than actually reading > the examples, it provides no hints to other testers or users about > things that might be installed, or installed first, to give more > complete testing and more functionality.
I'm not saying to use this instead of Suggests, I'm saying to do both. This way the Suggests entries really are suggestions: the examples will run with or without the presence of the suggested packages. I think there are so many variations on when a Suggested package should be installed, that it's not reasonable to expect to be able to encode them all in a machine readable way. They should be documented in human readable format. > Looking toward the future, I think it would be useful to have a standard > mechanism to indicate extensions that are available in a package, and > might be tested and used, but are not necessarily available on CRAN. For > instance, an example might access to a purchased database or take > advantage of a computer cluster. It seems limiting to think that all > testing that cannot be done on CRAN must be done almost exclusively by > the developer. If by "mechanism" you mean human-readable documentation, I agree with this. Duncan Murdoch > > Paul > >> >>I agree. As with vignettes, there is value in users being able to >>follow along and it would be nice to have a programatic way to >>identify extra package needed for fancy/involved/optional examples. >> >>Best, >> >>+ seth >> >>______________________________________________ >>R-devel@r-project.org mailing list >>https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel >> >> > ==================================================================================== > > La version française suit le texte anglais. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > This email may contain privileged and/or confidential inform...{{dropped}} > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel