Adding a package that I have in my own drat repository to R-universe

[Rafael-Ayala]

Dear all,

I am the maintainer of the asteRisk package (https://cran.r-project.org/package=asteRisk). This package requires large auxiliary data, which I cannot package within asteRisk itself because they take around 100 MB (way over CRAN's limit). The solution that I was suggested originally was to package the auxiliary data in a separate data package and to distribute it separately from within a drat repository. That is what I did, creating the asteRiskData package which is available under my own personal drat repository (https://github.com/Rafael-Ayala/drat).

However, I have been recently suggested to also make asteRiskData available on R-universe for perpetuity, which I think sounds like a good idea. After reading the instructions to set my own CRAN-like repository on R-universe (https://ropensci.org/blog/2021/06/22/setup-runiverse/), I understand that I can use a packages.json registry file so that, after installing the R-universe GitHub app, it will be generated automatically.

However, I am a bit confused as to what would be the best way to add the package that I am currently distributing through my own drat repository. It seems to me that adding the entire drat repository in the packages.json registry file would not be the way to go, since that would not be listing the asteRiskData package itself directly.

I guess a solution would be to create another repository in my GitHub account, where I directly place the source code for asteRiskData, and to list that repository in the packages.json file. But I was wondering if there any recommended way to add my package which I currently have in my drat repository to my R-universe repository, so that when I update it on the drat repository, it also is updated automatically on my R-universe repository?

Thanks a lot in advance