[R-pkg-devel] CRAN student assistants

Hello,

Since this has turned into a worldwide code review, I will briefly address
that, then reiterate the point of the original message.

I am working on an initial release of a package. It reveals information to
a user, sometimes in a print method-y way, sometimes in more of a verbose /
debugging way that is under control of a documented option, which defaults
to "off" or "quiet". For now, I have chosen to send all of this output
through a single functions that, yes, uses cat(). I went this direction for
an initial release to keep the package simple and accumulate some user
experience. If the "debugging mode" proves to be useful, I will rework it,
possibly using UI functionality that I believe our group might release in
the future. Rest assured, I understand cat() vs message() and the various
tradeoffs. I made mine and it is my impression that package maintainers
have this level of freedom.

The real point is: the currenrt CRAN submission process is designed for
one-way communication and there's no guarantee of continuity of reviewer.

If this type of implementation review is going to happen, it seems that
many aspects of the process would need to change, to make sure these new
standards are applied consistently to every submission and that existing
package are brought up to current standards.

To clarify something for Joris, I am not aware of any special channel of
communication or influence between CRAN and the R Foundation (of which I am
also a member). I think this is an aspect of CRAN vs R Foundation (vs R
Core even) that is unclear to many. These entities operate quite
independently, except for the fact that specific people belong to more than
one. So RF members interact with CRAN the same way as any other of member
of the community.

-- Jenny

On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 6:43 AM Jim Hester <james.f.hester at gmail.com> wrote:

Sorry first sentence should read

I agree that `message()` is ideally preferred, precisely because
of the reasons Martin stated, it is easily controlled by the user.

On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 9:41 AM Jim Hester <james.f.hester at gmail.com>
wrote:

I agree that `message()` is in an ideally preferred, precisely because
of the reasons Martin stated, it is easily controlled by the user.

Unfortunately, in the real world, the windows R gui console and
RStudio (which copied behavior) color messages, and anything on stderr
in fact, in red, which confuses most users who are trained to treat
messages in red as errors.

This also makes using colored output (where available) more
challenging when using `message()`.  You either have to accept the
text as red, or unconditionally change the text color to black or
similar, which can then be unreadable if the user is using a dark
color theme.

Jenny is an experienced package developer. She knew this tradeoff and
the use of `cat()` in gargle was deliberate choice in an imperfect
world. She did not make this decision out of ignorance of a better
way.

However there is no way for Jenny or any other package developers to
have a dialog during a CRAN submission, the communication is only in
one direction, if she resubmits explaining her rationale for the
choice she may not even have the same reviewer the next time.

Bioconductor seems to have a much better review process for
submissions, with real dialog between the reviewer and package author,
perhaps CRAN can learn from that process and improve the submission
experience in the future.

Jim

On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 7:41 AM Martin Morgan <mtmorgan.bioc at gmail.com>

wrote:

message() / warning() / stop() write to stderr whereas print() / cat()

write (by default) to stdout. Even without being able to suppress messages,
it is well-established practice (the story is that this is the reason why
'stderr' was introduced into unix,
https://www.jstorimer.com/blogs/workingwithcode/7766119-when-to-use-stderr-instead-of-stdout
) to separate diagnostic messages from program output. I agree that gargle
(in particular, and packages in general, given the theme of this mailing
list) would be a better package if it used message() where it now uses
cat().

Martin

?On 5/15/19, 5:04 AM, "R-package-devel on behalf of Joris Meys" <

r-package-devel-bounces at r-project.org on behalf of Joris.Meys at ugent.be>
wrote:

     2) Where cat() is used in gargle, message() is a better option for

the

     following reason:

     > myfun <- function(){cat("Yes");message("No")}
     > suppressMessages(myfun())

     Yes

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