Reduce Package Size

[ratnanil]

I had asked @mfherman (from nycgeo) whether he was planning to publish his package on CRAN at some point. And if yes, how he would deal with the package limit of 5MB. Here is his extensive answer:

1. Hadley says that it is possible to argue for an exception to the 5MB limit for data packages that will not change often. See the CRAN Notes section at the end of this chapter:
   http://r-pkgs.had.co.nz/data.html
2. Reduce the resolution of the sf files so that they are less than 5MB. (This may not be an option for your rasters.)
3. Host the files outside of CRAN and require a separate download of the data to use the package. The CRAN version has the R code and documentation, but the spatial files live in a separate package/repository. This is the approach of the USAboundaries package:
   https://lincolnmullen.com/software/usaboundaries/
4. If the spatial files are available for download via API, use the package to generate API calls for the user to download the files locally. This is the approach of the tigris package for US Census boundaries:
   https://github.com/walkerke/tigris

[mfherman]

If you end up submitting to CRAN before I do, please let me know how it goes!

[ratnanil]

Will do! But you are way ahead of me with your package, so I guess it's going to be the other way round.