If you need only DESCRIPTION, you can get it from github/cran - just open the file in any package and see how its web address is formed. There is a small delay between a package appearing on CRAN and it being mirrowed on github/CRAN though.
For caching strategies you could check, for example, revdepcheck (which does it on an epic scale). Georgi Boshnakov Get Outlook for Android<https://aka.ms/AAb9ysg> ________________________________ From: R-package-devel <r-package-devel-boun...@r-project.org> on behalf of Maciej Nasinski <nasinski.mac...@gmail.com> Sent: Friday, July 16, 2021 11:13:50 AM To: r-package-devel@r-project.org <r-package-devel@r-project.org> Subject: [R-pkg-devel] Scrapping R CRAN website from package Dear Sir or Madam, I am creating a new package `pacs` https://github.com/Polkas/pacs, which I want to send to R CRAN shortly. However I am not sure about R CRAN policy regarding scraping CRAN per package page with its archive. More precisely I am fetching the data from https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=%s and https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/%s/ (downloading an old tar.gz too). Why I need this: I could read any DESCRIPTION files for any time point and get a true dependency tree. Moreover I could get a life duration of any released package version, where shorter than 7 days are marked as risky. I could compare a package min required dependencies difference before we update it. And much more. I made a few notices like "Please as a courtesy to the R CRAN, don't overload their server by constantly using this function." inside the package. Optionally If scrapping R CRAN from my package is a problem I will try to build a separate DB with such data (updated everyday). Still any old tar.gz has to be downloaded. Maciej Nasinski, University of Warsaw [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
