Identify (and potentially address) issues in CRAN packages on R (old-)release only

[hturner]

This task has been proposed by the CRAN Team, cc @kurthornik. This work could be distributed among a large group of contributors.

Task

1. Identify CRAN packages that fail on R-old release or R-release, but not on R-devel
2. Find out what the issues are
3. Generate a list of the issues and prepare bug reports if feasible.

In most cases, such failures result from a missing version dependency for R or a package that the checked package depends on. In some cases it is an incompatibility that needs fixing.

Hints

• tools::CRAN_check_results() can be used to find the status (OK < NOTE < WARNING < ERROR < FAILURE) of checks on different platforms
• tools::CRAN_check_details() can be used to get the output of non-OK checks
• Submit PRs for CRAN packages with "Lost braces" NOTE on "Rd files" check #110 gives some code to find the URL for the source code repository, if provided in the package DESCRIPTION, where an issue or PR could be opened.

[nachalca]

R Dev Day Australia 2025

• airship-v1.4.3: PR opened: Fix Depends R (>= 4.1.0) el-meyer/airship#163
• adobeanaliticsr-v0.5.0: PR opened: modify R version dependency benrwoodard/adobeanalyticsr#190

[JayaniLakshika]

Fix bugs with the CRAN mirror:

• ABACUS: updated Authors@R and removed LazyData field. Send the patch to the maintainer (dr.m.nath@gmail.com).

[hturner]

Update for R Dev Day @ New Zealand 2025:

Code to identify CRAN packages that fail on R-old release or R-release, but not on R-devel

library(tools)
check_results <- CRAN_check_results()

## packages that fail on R-old release or R-release
check_non_devel <- subset(check_results, 
                          grepl("(r-oldrel)|(r-release)", Flavor) & 
                              !Status %in% c("OK", "NOTE"))

## packages that fail on R-devel
check_devel <- subset(check_results, 
                      grepl("r-devel", Flavor) & 
                          !Status %in% c("OK", "NOTE"))

## packages that fail on R-old release or R-release, but not on R-devel
fail <- setdiff(check_non_devel$Package, check_devel$Package)
length(fail)
#> [1] 434

# Find out why they fail
check_details <- CRAN_check_details()
fail_details <- subset(check_details,
                       grepl("(r-oldrel)|(r-release)", Flavor) & 
                           !Status %in% c("OK", "NOTE") &
                           Package %in% fail)

unique(fail_details$Check)
#>  [1] "re-building of vignette outputs"                 
#>  [2] "tests"                                           
#>  [3] "whether package can be installed"                
#>  [4] "package dependencies"                            
#>  [5] "examples"                                        
#>  [6] "Rd files"                                        
#>  [7] "S3 generic/method consistency"                   
#>  [8] "replacement functions"                           
#>  [9] "for missing documentation entries"               
#> [10] "for code/documentation mismatches"               
#> [11] "loading without being on the library search path"
#> [12] "compiled code"                                   
#> [13] "dependencies in R code"                          
#> [14] "Rd cross-references"                             
#> [15] "DESCRIPTION meta-information"                    
#> [16] "package subdirectories"                          
#> [17] "PDF version of manual"

## merge package info with check results
pdb <- CRAN_package_db()
fail_details <- merge(fail_details, pdb)

## subset to specific category of failures that have a repo on GitHub
focus <- subset(fail_details, 
                Check == "dependencies in R code" &
                    grepl("^http?s://github.com.*issues", BugReports))
dim(focus)
#> [1]  3 74
focus[1, c("Package", "BugReports", "Check", "Status", "Output")]
#>      Package                                 BugReports                  Check
#> 103 clitable https://github.com/kforner/clitable/issues dependencies in R code
#>      Status                                             Output
#> 103 WARNING Missing or unexported object: ‘datasets::penguins’