Yes, I completely agree the tangle code should run without errors, if the package author has provided such a script. However, I think it is also the package author's right to choose not to provide such a script, for reasons that I stated in the beginning (1. redundancy; 2. tangle functions ignore inline expressions that should not be ignored).
It seems that I still need to clarify it: I'm not talking about disabling _running_ the tangled code, but disabling _generating_ the code _optionally_. Unless someone is arguing that the tangled code _must_ be generated from vignettes, I do not think anybody in this discussion really has a conflict with anybody else. Please also note that I do not expect R core or CRAN maintainers to do any extra work: package authors can easily disable tangle by themselves without anything special flags to R CMD build or R CMD check. The vignettes are still built normally (in terms of "weave"). I brought forward the discussion to hear the possible harm that I was potentially not aware of when we disable tangle for R package vignettes (e.g. does it affect the quality of the package?). So far I have not heard real harm (I admit my judgment is subjective). Regards, Yihui -- Yihui Xie <xieyi...@gmail.com> Web: http://yihui.name On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 10:19 AM, Paul Gilbert <pgilbert...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On 06/02/2014 12:16 AM, Gabriel Becker wrote: >> >> Carl, >> >> I don't really have a horse in this race other than a strong feeling that >> whatever check does should be mandatory. >> >> That having been said, I think it can be argued that the fact that check >> does this means that it IS in the R package vignette specification that >> all >> vignettes must be such that their tangled code will run without errors. > > > My understanding of this is that the package maintainer can turn off > building the vignette (--no-vignettes) but R CMD check and CRAN still check > that the tangle code runs, and the check fails if it does not. Running the > tangle code can be turned off, just not by the package maintainer. You have > to make a special appeal to the CRAN maintainers, and give reasons they are > prepared to accept. I think the intention is that the tangle code should run > without errors. I doubt they would accept "it doesn't work" as an acceptable > reason. But there are reasons, like the vignette requires access to a > commercial database engine. Also, I think, turning this off means they just > do not run it regularly, in the daily checks. I don't think it necessarily > means the code is never tested. The testing may need to be done on machines > with special resources. > > Thus, --no-vignettes provides a mechanism to avoid running the tangle code > twice but, without special exemption, it is still run once. Some package > maintainers may not think of several feature of 'R CMD check' as 'aids'. I > think of it having more to do with maintaining some quality assurance, which > I think of as an aid but not a debugging aid. > > I believe the CRAN maintainers have intentionally, and successfully, made > disabling the running of tangled code more trouble than it is generally > worth. Effectively, a package should have tangle code that runs without > errors. > > (Of course, I could be wrong about all this, it has happened before.) > > Paul ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
