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International-Soil-Radiocarbon-Database / ISRaD

Repository for the development and release of ISRaD data and tools
https://international-soil-radiocarbon-database.github.io/ISRaD/
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openxlsx package to be archived #242

Closed jb388 closed 3 years ago

jb388 commented 3 years ago

@coreylawrence @aahoyt @ShaneStoner @SophievF

Apparently openxlsx is no longer being maintained. We need to switch to a new package for reading and writing excel files by Sept. 25th, 2020 or ISRaD will be "archived". I plan to implement the tidyverse package "readxl". This will also require an update to the ISRaD version on CRAN, which is long overdue anyway. So, if anyone has any pressing issues or changes that they would like incorporated into the next CRAN version speak soon!

jb388 commented 3 years ago

The openxlsx functions have been replaced with corresponding functions from readxl and writexl. It does sound like the openxlsx folks are planning to patch their package, but these changes should make ISRaD a bit more robust, and I didn't want to risk being "archived". The downside is that we will loose the functionality of the "ISRaD.save.xlsx" function, which enabled users to output ISRaD data into an excel file with the formatting of the ISRaD template. The old function is still available, but I put it into the devScripts directory so the package no longer depends on openxlsx.

However, I did write two new functions: ISRaD.read.entry, which reads single excel files into R, and ISRaD.save.entry, which saves ISRaD data objects as excel files (inclusive of the controlled vocabulary and header rows). So a net gain, I guess.

I plan to submit the updated package to CRAN tomorrow, barring any unforeseen issues. Right now we seem to be passing all the CRAN checks, so fingers crossed...