[R-pkg-devel] How to (conditionally) use an archived package (without Suggests)?
On 24/02/2018 6:45 PM, Marius Hofert wrote:
Hi,
A package 'foo' uses a package 'bar' (in Imports). 'bar' has been
archived and the maintainer of 'foo' was asked to fix the dependency
on 'bar' according to WRE 1.1.3.1.
Working with 'bar::' everywhere (and requireNamespace("bar", quietly =
TRUE)), as well as moving 'bar' from Imports to Suggests seems to work
but is not accepted on submission. Removing 'bar' also from Suggests
leads to
That should be fine, as long as your package still works when "bar" is
unavailable. That is, use requireNamespace in a conditional:
if (requireNamespace("bar", quietly = TRUE)) {
# do the good stuff
} else {
# do some less good substitute
}
without generating an error anywhere.
'::' or ':::' import not declared from: ?bar? 'loadNamespace' or 'requireNamespace' call not declared from: ?bar?
Right, you shouldn't refer to a package in code without mentioning it in the DESCRIPTION file.
Does this mean it is not possible to use 'bar' anymore in 'foo'?
I don't think so. But CRAN policies may have changed... Duncan Murdoch
These are (somewhat) related references I found: 1) https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-exts.html#Suggested-packages 2) https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2013-February/065947.html