Hi I have a package called `plantuml` (https://github.com/rkrug/plantuml) which converts plantuml code to UML graphs. It uses for this the java program https://plantuml.com which is Open Source.
As it is not allowed to distribute a binary with an R package, I use the approach of a function which downloads the jar file into the directory `system.file("jar/plantuml.jar", package = "plantuml”)`. This works nicely, and at the moment, the function is called automatically before the plantuml.jar is used. Now I would like to submit the package to CRAN. I can’t find the guidelines anymore, so I am asking here: What is the appropriate way of handling this? I can think of a at least two ways of making it obvious to the user, that a binary is downloaded: 1) if the file plantuml.jar is not present, ask the user to run the function `updatePlantumlJar()` which downloads the jar to the original location in the package directory 2) tell the user to download the file manually and to put it somewhere, where the package will find it I would prefer the first version, as the plantuml.jar would be in the package directory, where usually nobody but the package is doing stuff. Any suggestions on how I could make this “CRAN conform”? Thanks a lot, Rainer -- Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany) Orcid ID: 0000-0002-7490-0066 Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies University of Zürich Office Y34-J-74 Winterthurerstrasse 190 8075 Zürich Switzerland Office: +41 (0)44 635 47 64 Cell: +41 (0)78 630 66 57 email: rainer.k...@uzh.ch rai...@krugs.de Skype: RMkrug PGP: 0x0F52F982 -- Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany) Orcid ID: 0000-0002-7490-0066 Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies University of Zürich Office Y34-J-74 Winterthurerstrasse 190 8075 Zürich Switzerland Office: +41 (0)44 635 47 64 Cell: +41 (0)78 630 66 57 email: rainer.k...@uzh.ch rai...@krugs.de Skype: RMkrug PGP: 0x0F52F982 ______________________________________________ R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel