Jan and Hadley, There's also the issue of tests, vignettes, or examples requiring Suggested packages (one of the core applications of Suggests, in fact). These are all checked by R CMD check, so to ensure any package which should pass check would do so without suggested packages installed would require turning all of those checks off, which takes quite a few of the teeth out of R CMD check (and thus the assurances granted by knowing a package passes it). AFAIK (without going off and checking right now) you /could/ force R CMD check to do this now with a combination of options, though, if that's really what you want (which would allow your package to pass when _R_CHECK_FORCE_SUGGESTS_ is set to false).
~G On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 7:25 AM, Hadley Wickham <h.wick...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 5:33 AM, Jan Górecki <j.gore...@wit.edu.pl> wrote: > > Dear R team, > > > > Are suggested dependencies mandatory in context of `R CMD check` when > > using env var `_R_CHECK_FORCE_SUGGESTS_=FALSE`? > > > > Suggested dependencies are nice because are optional. > > But that feature often isn't valid when trying to run `R CMD check` on > them. > > I would like to use `export _R_CHECK_FORCE_SUGGESTS_=FALSE`, which > > according to the comment in `tools/R/check.R`: > > > >> The suggested packages are required for a complete check. > > Checking can be attempted without them by setting the environment > > variable _R_CHECK_FORCE_SUGGESTS_ to a false value. > > > > should be sufficient to run *check* process without installing suggested > deps. > > If it is not true, then how to differentiate the suggested packages > > which are optional from those mandatory? > > It would be helpful to have kind of `vignetteBuilder` DESCRIPTION > > field called `testChecker`, so DESCRIPTION file could precisely manage > > packages dependencies. > > That way batch checking packages would be easier, as required dep > > metadata would be at hand in description file. Batch checking pkgs > > with all their suggests will simply result into testing whole CRAN. > > > > In a single package it can be handled with `if (requireNamespace(.)) > > test_package(.)` for `testthat` and `knitr`, also with mocking up > > `.Rout` files. > > > > But I'm interested into canonical design of a suggested package and > > `_R_CHECK_FORCE_SUGGESTS_` env var. > > Is there any R core dev team recommendation/suggestion on that? and > > don't you thing new field `testChecker` in DESCRIPTION could help for > > batch checking pkgs? Installing all suggested packages of all reverse > > dependencies doesn't scale. > > In principle, I believe a package should pass R CMD check if no > suggested packages are installed. However, since this is not currently > automatically checked, many packages will fail to cleanly pass R CMD > check if suggested packages are missing. In my experience, it's much > easier to simply install all dependencies of your reverse dependencies > (although this is obviously much easier when you're using a platform > with binary packages available from CRAN). I routinely do this for > hundreds to thousands of packages. > > Hadley > > -- > http://hadley.nz > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > -- Gabriel Becker, PhD Associate Scientist (Bioinformatics) Genentech Research [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
