package development

| Yes, there are several options for not distributing tests.  I was 
| thinking more about how to distribute them with a simple mechanism for 
| anyone to run them, but in a way that they are not run by the usual R 
| CMD check.

One scheme I quite like (despite its "heavy" feel) is what Martin Maechler
had cooked up for the Rmetrics packages, based on earlier work by Gregor
Gorjanc in the gdata package:

 -- it uses RUnit, so you get the full support of a mature unit testing
    framework.

 -- the tests are installed in inst/unitTests and hence available for tests
    during package build as well as once installed which is nice as you can
    re-rerun tests on installed packages 

 -- tests/ has a 'hook' script that calls the tests from ../inst/unitTests
    during the 'R CMD check' run

Any Rmetrics package can serve as an example. I just checked with timeSeries.

It may be possible to detect whether these are called during R CMD check
or not. If not, it may be worth adding another variable, or value in
options() or whathaveyou to make it detectable.

Dirk

Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.