Rmpi in "Depends"
Dear Brian, Thanks. Yes, listing as "Suggests" is one approach (what I am doing now, and what some of my other packages in CRAN that use Rmpi do), but it seems somewhat like cheating (the fact is that the package does depend on Rmpi) and not very elegant (I'd rather have the failure at install time than at run time). So something like having the dependency check without actually starting the LAM/MPI universe. Best, R.
On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 3:29 PM, Brian G. Peterson<brian at braverock.com> wrote:
Ramon Diaz-Uriarte wrote:
Dear All, I have one package where I listed Rmpi in the "Depends" line in the DESCRIPTION file. But this leads to unwanted behavior: installing the package will try to start the lam universe (I am using LAM/MPI here). This will not work if done as root, and is annoying when done as a regular user. I just checked, and no package in CRAN is listed that has a reverse Depends on Rmpi. I've googled around, but haven't been able to locate anything, though I think I remember this issue has appeared in the past in some list. Any ideas of the best way to proceed? Thanks, R.
Sure, list it as "Suggests" in the package DESCRIPTION. Inside your code, check to see if it is installed, and throw a warning or stop() error if the package is not available without starting up the lam universe. ?Make clear in your documentation why you've done this. Regards, ?- Brian -- Brian G. Peterson http://braverock.com/brian/ Ph: 773-459-4973 IM: bgpbraverock
Ramon Diaz-Uriarte Structural Biology and Biocomputing Programme Spanish National Cancer Centre (CNIO) http://ligarto.org/rdiaz Phone: +34-91-732-8000 ext. 3019