From jarioksa at sun3.oulu.fi  Tue Sep 20 15:25:28 2005
From: jarioksa at sun3.oulu.fi (Jari Oksanen)
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 16:25:28 +0300
Subject: [Rd] Shy Suggestion?
Message-ID: <1127222728.21824.15.camel@biol102145.oulu.fi>

The R-exts manual says about 'Suggests' field in package DESCRIPTION:

"The optional `Suggests' field uses the same syntax as `Depends' and
lists packages that are not necessarily needed."

However, this seems to be a suggestion you cannot refuse. If you suggest
packages:

(a line from DESCRIPTION):
Suggests: MASS, ellipse, rgl, mgcv, akima, lattice

This is what happens:

$ /tmp/R-alpha/bin/R CMD check vegan
* checking for working latex ... OK
* using log directory '/home/jarioksa/devel/R/vegan.Rcheck'
* using R version 2.2.0, 2005-09-19
* checking for file 'vegan/DESCRIPTION' ... OK
* this is package 'vegan' version '1.7-75'
... clip ...
* checking package dependencies ... ERROR
Packages required but not available:
  ellipse rgl akima

In my cultural context suggesting a package means that it is not
necessarily needed and the check should not fail, although some
functionality would be unavailable without those packages.  I want the
package to pass the tests in a clean standard environment without
forcing anybody to load any extra packages. Is there a possibility to be
modest and shy in suggestions so that it would be up to the user to get
those extra packages needed without requiring them in R CMD check?

I stumbled on this with earlier versions of R, and then my solution was
to suggest nothing. 

cheers, jari oksanen
-- 
Jari Oksanen -- Dept Biology, Univ Oulu, 90014 Oulu, Finland
Ph. +358 8 5531526, cell +358 40 5136529, fax +358 8 5531061
email jari.oksanen at oulu.fi, homepage http://cc.oulu.fi/~jarioksa/



[Rd] Shy Suggestion?
Jari Oksanen