On 05/11/2014, 6:48 AM, Martin Maechler wrote:
>>>>>> Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.dun...@gmail.com>
>>>>>> on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 06:28:19 -0500 writes:
>
> > On 03/11/2014, 4:17 AM, Martin Maechler wrote:
> >>>>>>> Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.dun...@gmail.com>
> >>>>>>> on Sat, 1 Nov 2014 13:17:56 -0400 writes:
> >>
> >> > On 01/11/2014, 11:33 AM, Peter Simons wrote:
> >> >> Hi Uwe,
> >> >>
> >> >> > Nobody in R core runs NixOS and can reproduce
> >> >> this. This passes on most > other platforms,
> >> >> apparently. If you can point us to a problem or send >
> >> >> patches, we'd appreciate it.
> >> >>
> >> >> have tried running the test suite in a build that's
> >> >> configured with '--without-recommended-packages'? That's
> >> >> about the only unusual thing we do when building with
> >> >> Nix. Other than that, our build runs on a perfectly
> >> >> ordinary Linux -- and it used to succeed fine in earlier
> >> >> versions of R.
> >>
> >> > The tests "make check-devel" and "make check-all" are
> >> > documented to require the recommended packages, and will
> >> > fail without them. On Windows, "make check" also needs
> >> > them, so this may be true on other systems as well.
> >>
> >> Thank you Duncan, for clarifying (above and later in the thread).
> >>
> >> Would it be hard to strive for
> >>
> >> 1) 'make check' should pass without-rec....
> >> 2) 'make check-devel' etc do require the recommended packages.
> >>
> >> That would be ideal I think - and correspond to the fact that
> >> we call the recommended packages 'recommended' only.
>
> > I think we could avoid errors in make check, but not warnings. People
> > need to understand what the tests are testing, and recognize that some
> > warnings are ignorable.
>
> > To do this, we'd need to make sure that no examples in base packages
> > require the use of recommended packages. Currently the failure happens
> > in capture.output, because it runs the glm example which needs MASS.
> > (The glm example is marked not to need MASS during testing, but the
> > capture.output example runs everything.)
>
> aah.. that's interesting in itself: Maybe example() should also
> get 'run.dontcheck' argument in addition to its 'run.dontrun'
> and Rd2ex() a similar enhancement.... I'm looking into that.
>
> > Fixing that one causes the error to happen later.
>
> "fascinating", as Kurt may say ..
>
> >> OTOH, if '1)' is too much work for us, we could add this as a
> >> 'wishlist' item and wait for someone to send patches..
>
> > Alternatively, we could require the recommended packages for all tests.
>
> > Duncan Murdoch
>
> which seems too extreme. If some people really only want to test
> something like "the R base engine", they should be easily able
> to do so, and I still think that 'make check' should do exactly that.
> In the tests/Makefile.{common|in} this is even called
> "test-all-basics"
>
> One thing to consider might remove 'Examples' from the "all-basics"
> and use 'Examples' only in a new make target between "basics"
> and "devel".
> But personally, I'd strive for fixing the few (I hope) cases in
> the Examples we currently have.
> Using the \dontcheck{..} tag should really help there.
I don't think we should be removing tests for everybody to allow a few
people to test a build of R that none of us actually use.
The choice of name "recommended" is unfortunate, because it suggests
that these packages are not necessary in order to get R to run: but a
build that doesn't contain them won't work properly. The test is giving
correct results: R "without-recommended" is broken.
We might be able to get it to pass "make check" by removing tests, but
example(capture.output) and example(glm) will still fail.
Duncan Murdoch
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