On 2 August 2016 at 16:07, Duncan Murdoch wrote: | On 02/08/2016 1:41 PM, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote: | > | > On 2 August 2016 at 13:12, Duncan Murdoch wrote: | > | On 02/08/2016 1:01 PM, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote: | > | > | > | > On 2 August 2016 at 11:36, Joshua Ulrich wrote: | > | > | Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't that the point of calling | > | > | requireNamespace()? For example: | > | > | if (requireNamespace("suggestedPackage")) | > | > | stop("suggestedPackage required but not installed") | > | > | | > | > | That doesn't seem like a heavy burden for package writers when writing | > | > | infrequently used functions in their package. You could even add the | > | > | install.packages command to the error message to instruct users to | > | > | install the required package. | > | > | > | > [...] | > | > | > | > | I personally would not want install.packages() to install packages I'm | > | > | unlikely to actually use. | > | > | | > | > | It's also not clear to me how importing rarely used functions causes | > | > | bloat, but installing all packages for all rarely-used functions does | > | > | not cause bloat. | > | > | > | > Sadly, some people whose advocacy is taken as religous gospel in some | > | > circles, particularly beginners, advocate pretty much that: treat Suggests: | > | > as Depends: and install it anyway because, hell, why would one tests. | > | > | > | > I regularly run (large) reverse depends checks against some of my more widely | > | > used packages and run into this all the time. | > | > | > | > We (as a community, including CRAN whose gatekeepers I have failed to | > | > convince about this on on multiple attempts) are doing this wrong. | > | > "Suggests:" really means optionally, rather than unconditionally. But it | > | > would appear that you and I are about to only ones desiring that behaviour. | > | | > | I thought I understood Joshua's point (and agreed with it), but you also | > | seem to be agreeing with him and I don't understand at all what you're | > | saying. | > | | > | What is "this" in your last paragraph, that you have failed to convince | > | CRAN gatekeepers about? | > | > It is really simple: Having _both_ Suggests: foo _and_ an unconditonal call | > to foo::bar() in the code. | > | > Whereas Josh and I argue that it needs to be conditional on requireNames() | > coming back TRUE. | | I am feeling particularly dense today. What about "Having _both_ | Suggests: foo _and_ an unconditonal call to foo::bar() in the code." did | you fail to convince CRAN about? That it is a good thing, or a bad thing?
It is a Really Bad Thing )TM) because I read Writing R Extensions as meaning that these ought to be tested for presence (as Suggests != Depends, so we cannot [rather: should not] assume them) yet package authors are sloppy (and CRAN let's them, being charged as facilitator to a crime here) and BAM I get a failing test as some bad, bad code unconditionally calls code that should only be called conditional on a suggested package actuallt being there. Hth, Dirk -- http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | e...@debian.org ______________________________________________ R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel