From ligges at statistik.tu-dortmund.de  Wed Mar 28 16:07:05 2012
From: ligges at statistik.tu-dortmund.de (Uwe Ligges)
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:07:05 +0200
Subject: [Rd] CRAN policies
In-Reply-To: <CB9770B4.36D98%jeff.a.ryan@gmail.com>
References: <CB9770B4.36D98%jeff.a.ryan@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4F731B09.5000203@statistik.tu-dortmund.de>



On 27.03.2012 20:33, Jeffrey Ryan wrote:
> Thanks Uwe for the clarification on what goes and what stays.
>
> Still fuzzy on the notion of "significant" though.  Do you have an example
> or two for the list?


We have to look at those notes again and again in order to find if 
something important is noted, hence please always try to avoid all notes 
unless the effect is really intended!


Consider the Note "No visible binding for global variable"
We cannot know if your code intends to use such a global variable (which 
is undesirable in most cases), hence would let is pass if it seems to be 
sensible.

Another Note such as "empty section" or "partial argument match" can 
quickly be fixed, hence just do it and don't waste our time.

Best,
Uwe Ligges


>
> Jeff
>
> P.S.
> I meant to also thank all of CRAN volunteers for the momentous efforts
> involved, and it is nice to see some explanation of how we can help, as
> well as a peek into what goes on 'behind the curtain' ;-)
>
> On 3/27/12 1:19 PM, "Uwe Ligges"<ligges at statistik.tu-dortmund.de>  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 27.03.2012 19:10, Jeffrey Ryan wrote:
>>> Is there a distinction as to NOTE vs. WARNING that is documented?  I've
>>> always assumed (wrongly?) that NOTES weren't an issue with publishing on
>>> CRAN, but that they may change to WARNINGS at some point.
>>
>> We won't kick packages off CRAN for Notes (but we will if Warnings are
>> not fixed), but we may not accept new submissions with significant Notes.
>>
>> Best,
>> Uwe Ligges
>>
>>
>>
>>> Is the process by which this happens documented somewhere?
>>>
>>> Jeff
>>>
>>> On 3/27/12 11:09 AM, "Gabor Grothendieck"<ggrothendieck at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> 2012/3/27 Uwe Ligges<ligges at statistik.tu-dortmund.de>:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 27.03.2012 17:09, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 7:52 AM, Prof Brian Ripley
>>>>>> <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk>    wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> CRAN has for some time had a policies page at
>>>>>>> http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/policies.html
>>>>>>> and we would like to draw this to the attention of package
>>>>>>> maintainers.
>>>>>>>    In
>>>>>>> particular, please
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> - always send a submission email to CRAN at r-project.org with the
>>>>>>> package
>>>>>>> name and version on the subject line.  Emails sent to individual
>>>>>>> members
>>>>>>> of
>>>>>>> the team will result in delays at best.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> - run R CMD check --as-cran on the tarball before you submit it.  Do
>>>>>>> this with the latest version of R possible: definitely R 2.14.2,
>>>>>>> preferably R 2.15.0 RC or a recent R-devel.  (Later versions of R
>>>>>>> are
>>>>>>> able to give better diagnostics, e.g. for compiled code and
>>>>>>> especially
>>>>>>> on Windows. They may also have extra checks for recently uncovered
>>>>>>> problems.)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Also, please note that CRAN has a very heavy workload (186 packages
>>>>>>> were
>>>>>>> published last week) and to remain viable needs package maintainers
>>>>>>> to
>>>>>>> make
>>>>>>> its life as easy as possible.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Regarding the part about "warnings or significant notes" in that
>>>>>> page,
>>>>>> its impossible to know which notes are significant and which ones are
>>>>>> not significant except by trial and error.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Right, it needs human inspection to identify false positives. We
>>>>> believe
>>>>> most package maintainers are able to see if he or she is hit by such a
>>>>> false
>>>>> positive.
>>>>
>>>> The problem is that a note is generated and the note is correct. Its
>>>> not a false positive.  But that does not tell you whether its
>>>> "significant" or not.  There is no way to know.  One can either try to
>>>> remove all notes (which may not be feasible) or just upload it and by
>>>> trial and error find out if its accepted or not.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Statistics&   Software Consulting
>>>> GKX Group, GKX Associates Inc.
>>>> tel: 1-877-GKX-GROUP
>>>> email: ggrothendieck at gmail.com
>>>>
>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>
>>>
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel



[Rd] CRAN policies
Uwe Ligges