Another possibility, if you want the jar to be dynamic and also have a standard location for it, is to write it to the R config/user dir. This is available via R_user_dir() in R 4.0 (and earlier versions via the backports package). An older alternative that still works is to use the rappdirs package.
-----Original Message----- From: R-package-devel <r-package-devel-boun...@r-project.org> On Behalf Of Rainer M Krug Sent: Tuesday, 23 June 2020 10:48 PM To: Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.dun...@gmail.com> Cc: R Package Devel <r-package-devel@r-project.org> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [R-pkg-devel] Proper CRAN way - How to handle dependency of java jar file? Thanks Duncan. > On 23 Jun 2020, at 14:35, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.dun...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Your assumption that .jar files are not allowed is wrong: a number of > packages contain them: rscala, J4R, Rbgs, bartMachine, OpenStreetMap, ... > There's a specific mention about how to include them in the CRAN policy > document: That’s good to know. > > "For Java .class and .jar files, the sources should be in a top-level java > directory in the source package (or that directory should explain how they > can be obtained)." So a tet file in the inst/jar directory giving the link to the GitHub repo would be fine in this case? > > If you still decide not to include your .jar file (maybe it is too big, for > example), I guess it would be stretching it a bit, as the jar file is 8.2 MB, and plantuml has regular continuous updates, so I would prefer to keep it dynamic. > then I think your option 1 is unusable for those people who can't write to > the library location because of permission problems. (Admin privileges are > often necessary to install packages in the main library.) Generally I think > everyone can install packages somewhere, but users do really get confused > when they have multiple library locations, possibly each containing a > different version of a package. So the suggested option would be to have a function, which 1) ask the user to create a directory in the home folder 2) download the jar file into that directory or, when no permission is granted, into the tmpdir() Thanks, no major changes necessary for that, Rainer > > Duncan Murdoch > > On 23/06/2020 8:18 a.m., Rainer M Krug wrote: >> 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 > -- 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 [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel ______________________________________________ R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
