package checks and tests; was: Re: A "rude" question

[moved to R-devel]

I am a bit concerned by the fact that package developers would be 
removing all tests. The tests seem like one of the main mechanisms for 
ensuring that CRAN does not descend to the almost useless state of 
statlib: there is an automatic mechanism for removing packages that no 
longer work.

I have several tests that I don't put in packages, because they are very 
long or they don't work without locally available databases, but I think 
it is important that there should be tests that check the main 
functionality of packages.  For very long tests like monte carlo 
simulations it is usually fairly easy to devise some short version (a 
few iterations) which checks that the software actually works and gives 
results that are the same as they always have been, even though it does 
not check the more serious statistical problems one would actually want 
to do.

Perhaps there should be another directory, called something like 
longTests, that is not run daily but is run occasionally.

On r-help I suggested that users might contribute tests to package 
developers, but another possibility is that there is some mechanism for 
them to contribute suites of package tests directly to CRAN. This would 
provide a mechanism for more complete checking of packages, and perhaps 
a just system for removing packages when the developer is no longer 
active and the package is broken.

Paul Gilbert