Fields used by available.packages

Llu?s Revilla writes:

Yes, I think that would be enough.?

Thank you, Kurt!

Llu?s

On Wed, 12 Jun 2024 at 16:35, Kurt Hornik <Kurt.Hornik at wu.ac.at> wrote:

Llu?s Revilla writes:

    Lluis,

    So in available.packages() I could replace

    ? ? if (is.null(fields))
    ? ? ? ? fields <- requiredFields
    ? ? else {
    ? ? ? ? stopifnot(is.character(fields))
    ? ? ? ? fields <- unique(c(requiredFields, fields))
    ? ? }

    by someting like

    ? ? if(is.null(fields))
    ? ? ? ? fields <- getOption("available_packages_fields")
    ? ? if(is.null(fields))
    ? ? ? ? fields <- requiredFields
    ? ? else {
    ? ? ? ? stopifnot(is.character(fields))
    ? ? ? ? fields <- unique(c(requiredFields, fields))
    ? ? }

    ?

    Best
    -k

Hi all,
I have recently been researching how available.packages and
install.packages filter packages from repositories with additional

    fields

in their PACKAGES file.

Currently there are some default filters, but users (and R admins) can

    set

up their own filters by passing a list to the fields argument or adding
them to the "available_packages_filters" option.
But if the fields used by the filters are not read by default, then

    users

must manually add the required fields to each call to

    available.packages.

This makes it difficult to use new fields and to control what is

    installed

in highly regulated systems which want to use more fields to select

    what is

installed.

Current workarounds considered are:
? 1) The filtering function requiring new fields intercepts the call to
available.packages and adds the desired fields via eval in
parent.environment and then adds the filters again.
? 2) Import new data (remote or local) when filtering packages, merge

    them

and filter accordingly.
? 3) Suggestions?

The first solution is complicated, while the second doesn't use the R
machinery of tools::write_PACKAGES to set up the repository with all

    the

fields (although how to add more fields to the repository file is a
different issue).

Would it be possible to add a new option to add fields to be read by
available.packages, similar to filters?
The same approach for fields as for filters would avoid the two

    workarounds

mentioned. To match it, the new option could be named
"available_packages_fields".

I look forward to hearing from you,

Llu?s

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