if(--as-cran)?

| No!  We're not asking for the r-core to create more test suites, or even
| to do anything different based on the test intensity level.
| 
| We're just asking for a standard way to control the intensity of the tests
| *we* write to prevent us from duplicating this functionality in our own
| packages, probably in incompatible ways.

Seconded.  

An add-on argument to the already established option --as-cran may be the
best.

And to iterate, what bugs me is that for _me_ on _my_ machine developing _my_
package I have remember how to enable what is now (as per CRAN's decree)
"non-standard behaviour" of full testing.  I fully agree with what Terry had
said: more tests are better (when we develop).  I want the full suite at my
end; that is after all why we wrote it!

The "non-standard" behaviour really is CRAN, and as it is already being
accounted for, we may as well add a hook we all can use to disable some tests
so that the runtime at CRAN remains within desired bounds.  But that is the
special case, and --as-cran should enable it (unless overridden).

Dirk

Dirk Eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org | http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com