On 2 April 2021 at 09:45, Duncan Murdoch wrote: | On 01/04/2021 9:06 p.m., David Cortes wrote: | > Is it allowed to use such functions in packages? I see a few packages | > currently in CRAN have the same note in the checks, such as "iotools", | > and am wondering if I should just email the CRAN maintainer explaining | > that I intend to use the function anyway, since it's just a note rather | > than a warning or error. | | The CRAN policy document is quite clear on this: "CRAN packages should | use only the public API. Hence they should not use entry points not | declared as API in installed headers nor .Internal() nor .Call() etc | calls to base packages. Also, ::: should not be used to access | undocumented/internal objects in base packages (nor should other means | of access be employed). Such usages can cause packages to break at any | time, even in patched versions of R. " | | So you are free to use that function, but CRAN won't publish your | package if you do.
What you can do is to republish the functions in a package you own and maintain, and then export them from there. I have done that in RApiDatetime for some date/time parsing code, and in RApiSerialize for serialization. It is not ideal as your copies may become stale over time. But it gives you a way forward as long as R Core exercises their right to have non-public APIs. As R Core has demonstrated exemplary fidelity to the parts of the API that are public, we should not be too grumpy that they reserve this option. Dirk -- https://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | e...@debian.org ______________________________________________ R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
