[R-pkg-devel] Packages that depend on third-party binaries
Hi all, I have a package that might be useful for a lot of my colleagues. It provides functions for reading a binary file format generated by measurement instruments by a specific manufacturer. Eventually, I would like to make this package available on CRAN. One problem is that this package uses a binary blob provided by said manufacturer. I understand that it is not allowed to include binaries in R packages. The question is, what else can I do? Are there any recommendations or best practices that one should follow in this situation? Any example of existing CRAN packages that deal with this problem? I suppose one solution would be that the R code installs without the binary but warns when the user tries to use it without having installed the binary. In this scenario, it would be the user?s responsibility to make sure that the binary is correctly installed. If the user fails to do that, the package is completely useless. Of course this also has implications for the sample code in the man pages which is not guaranteed to work and will certainly not work on CRAN build servers. Titus -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 472 bytes Desc: not available URL: <https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-package-devel/attachments/20160123/434211c7/attachment.bin>