CRAN pre-check

[hturner]

From discussions with people on R-Ladies slack, at R-Ladies meetings etc, it seems that many people would appreciate support with their first CRAN submission. The support might include:

• assessing at a high-level if their package is ready for CRAN submission
• supporting them with testing on multiple platforms and trouble-shooting issues
• going through a basic pre-release check list

Obviously this could be extended to a deeper code review similar to what rOpenSci/Bioconductor do, but this would require more commitment from reviewers.

I think in the first instance the On Ramps team might be able to offer this to previous participants of Forwards package development workshops. This would also help with tracking and demonstrating the impact of these workshops.

A further iteration might role out to R-Ladies, with additional volunteers from R-Ladies.

[lawremi]

If we limit the scope to ensuring that the CRAN submissions process goes smoothly, such as helping people get past stuff like R CMD check warnings, this seems achievable. The simplest solution would be something like the R package devel mailing list: a channel for asking for help on resolving warnings and other issues. Doesn't R Hub or something provide automated cross-platform checks?

[hturner]

Regarding R Hub, I've had many cases where a package has failed check on R Hub, but passed on a local install and on CRAN. Examples:

• package uses a Bioconductor package and the test machine doesn't have up-to-date Bioconductor
• test machine doesn't have up-to-date pandoc
• odd errors like: there is no package called "lattice", perhaps a broken R-devel build or similar

Maybe these are temporary issues, but working out if it's an R Hub issue or a package issue would be the type of support we can give.

Another problem can be that the package fails, but the problem is hard to fix if you don't have access to a machine with that OS - the log doesn't always give a good clue how to fix.