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[R-pkg-devel] Package removed from CRAN without warning

4 messages · Ivan Krylov, Uwe Ligges, Rafael Pereira

Rafael Pereira
# 
Hi all,

I recently noticed that my package {flightsbr}
<https://ipeagit.github.io/flightsbr/> has been removed from CRAN but I
never received any email or warning that the package would be removed. It
seems my package was removed because it imports the {parzer}
<https://docs.ropensci.org/parzer/> package that was also removed on July
1st. The authors of {parzer} told me they did not receive any messages or
warnings. What makes this a bit more puzzling, is that both packages were
passing all CRAN checks (see here
<https://cran-archive.r-project.org/web/checks/2025/2025-07-02_check_results_flightsbr.html>
and
here
<https://cran-archive.r-project.org/web/checks/2025/2025-07-02_check_results_parzer.html>
).

I'm wondering what has caused this and if this might have happened to other
packages.

Best wishes,

Rafa Pereira
Ivan Krylov
# 
? Thu, 17 Jul 2025 08:30:12 -0300
"Rafael H. M. Pereira" <rafa.pereira.br at gmail.com> ?????:
While it is, indeed, not visible in the archived check results, digging
into src/contrib/PACKAGES.in reveals that 'parzer' failed the
UBSanitizer check on an Apple M1 machine on June 1st:

https://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/bdr/M1-SAN/parzer/tests/testthat.Rout

Casting a NaN value to an integer is undefined behaviour (with de-facto
different results on x86_64 and ARM processors). There used to be a
check for 'x' being NA_real_, but it seems to have been broken during
refactoring three years ago:
https://github.com/ropensci/parzer/blame/10a8aa68bea8b18a69cc99326e949c5beb144afd/src/pz_parse_parts.cpp#L11-L21

Arguably, the check should be for isnan(x), not only R_IsNA(x): the
latter will still miss non-NA NaN values.

I think that the packages should have had a yellow deadline mark (i.e.
with(tools::CRAN_package_db(), Deadline[Package %in% c('parzer',
'flightsbr')]) should have been returning non-NA values) in the month
that passed. Having a number of packages archived due to a silent
problem with mail delivery is very unfortunate.
Uwe Ligges
# 
You got a message from Professor Ripley on June 18 with subject "CRAN 
package parzer and its reverse dependencies" which asked you to prepare 
for the parzer archival.

Best,
Uwe Ligges
On 17.07.2025 13:30, Rafael H. M. Pereira wrote:
Rafael Pereira
# 
Uwe, I have checked my inbox and spam and could not find the email. I might
have deleted it by accident. In any case, thank you both for the
clarification. We'll be working to resubmit both packages to CRAN soon.

best wishes,
Rafa

On Thu, Jul 17, 2025 at 9:24?AM Uwe Ligges <ligges at statistik.tu-dortmund.de>
wrote: