Hi Dirk,
> On Oct 3, 2019, at 10:20 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel <e...@debian.org> wrote:
>
>
> Hi John,
>
> On 3 October 2019 at 13:56, Fox, John wrote:
> | > On Oct 3, 2019, at 9:11 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel <e...@debian.org> wrote:
> | > On 3 October 2019 at 10:10, Driver, Charles wrote:
> | > | I have a function that outputs / compiles some latex. To do this I use
> Sys.which('pdflatex') and if nothing is found, prompt the user whether to
> install tinytex package. So, normally I understand the use of 'Suggests' in
> the package description to be for when there are only certain functions /
> tests that require the package. In this case, the package requirement is also
> conditional on other software (ie a tex distribution) not being found,
> otherwise it is unnecessary. There are no tests or examples that depend on
> the package. Should tinytex be in the 'Suggests' list?
> | >
> | > A few suggestions:
> | >
> | > - IIRC CRAN Policy asks you to not have interactive prompts, and clearly
> | > prohibits messing with the system. So no to the prompt to install.
> |
> | Can you point to where in the CRAN policies this behaviour is prohibited?
>
> Well I hedged my bet with "IIRC".
Yes, I noticed that, but didn't want people to be potentially misled since you
didn't "RC" ;)
> Interactive prompts are neither explicitly
> allowed, nor disallowed, but the larger paragraph you quote from gives some
> hints. Now, turning from the 'letter of the law' to the 'spirit of the law',
> how many packages have you checked in the 25+ years of using R?
As it turns out, a lot, but I'm sure vastly fewer than you. The car package,
e.g., has many reverse dependencies that I check before a new version of the
package goes to CRAN.
> How often
> would you have wanted an interactive prompt?
Well, never of course, but shouldn't interactive prompts only appear in
interactive sessions -- e.g., enclosed in if (interactive()) {} in an example?
Moreover, I wasn't trying to argue that one *should* necessarily do this, just
point out that one can in certain circumstances without violating CRAN
policies. In the original context of this thread, a simple error message
indicating that LaTeX is absent probably would suffice.
Best,
John
> I just ran reverse depends for
> both Rcpp and RcppArmadillo in the last 48 hours so that is 2000+ packages --
> and I am rather glad I didn't face prompts for any one of those 2000+.
>
> | The closest I can see is: "Packages should not write in the user’s home
> filespace (including clipboards), nor anywhere else on the file system apart
> from the R session’s temporary directory ... " But then, "Limited exceptions
> may be allowed in interactive sessions if the package obtains confirmation
> from the user."
> |
> | Moreover, the tinytex package does precisely these kinds of things,
> including installing LaTeX.
>
> And tinytex is something I keep finding problematic as it creates an
> obfuscation layer. There was a recent (purely latex-side) bug I fixed in one
> of my packages after an alert from CRAN. But the additional tinytex layer
> made the latex-side error incomprehensible to misleading to the point where
> the CRAN maintainer was mislead (as I was later). Running plain tex is
> better. I so wish tinytex would let me opt out and render directly via
> tools::texi2pdf but sadly I have no such option. I understand that tinytex
> seems to help on some platforms without working infrastruture; I have always
> had working (and extensible) texlive around due to the OS/distro I use.
>
> Anyway, this is going off-topic. It might be nice for R to offer a query
> whether 'is tex available?' just how capabilities() and extSoftVersion()
> gives hint on some other optional capabilities (which are arguably closer to
> its core).
>
> 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
