From therneau at mayo.edu  Wed Sep 19 16:08:56 2012
From: therneau at mayo.edu (Terry Therneau)
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2012 09:08:56 -0500
Subject: [Rd] R-devel Digest, Vol 115, Issue 18
In-Reply-To: <mailman.29.1348048809.29913.r-devel@r-project.org>
References: <mailman.29.1348048809.29913.r-devel@r-project.org>
Message-ID: <5059D1F8.1070501@mayo.edu>

> In general, as a package user, I don't want people to be able to
> suppress checks on CRAN.  I want things fixed.
>
> So I am pretty sure there won't ever be a reliable "CRAN-detector" put
> into R.  It would devalue the brand.
>
> Duncan Murdoch

My problem is that CRAN demands that I suppress a large fraction of my checks, in order to 
fit within time constraints.  This leaves me with 3 choices.

1. Add lines to my code that tries to guess if CRAN is invoker.  A cat and mouse game per 
your desire above.

2. Remove large portions of my test suite.  I consider the survival package to be one of 
the pre-eminent current code sets in the world precisely because of the extensive 
validations, this action would change it to a second class citizen.

3. Add a magic environment variable to my local world, only do the full tests if it is 
present, and make the dumbed down version the default.  Others who want to run the full 
set are then SOL, which I very much don't like.

I agree that CRAN avoidence, other than the time constraint, should be verboten.  But I 
don't think that security through obscurity is the answer.  And note that under scenario 
3, which is essentially what is currently being forced on us, I can do such micshief as 
easily as under number 1.

Terry Therneau



[Rd] R-devel Digest, Vol 115, Issue 18
Terry Therneau