R devel - Feb 2015 - libcurl support and curlGetHeaders warning message in R CMD check

Dear R devel,

Is libcurl support required to run R.devel, or is it optional?

I'm compiling R.devel on an older Debian machine  that only has libcurl 
version 7.21.0

The R news file says

"
Sun, 25 Jan 2015
CHANGES IN R-devel NEW FEATURES

     Optional use of ?libcurl? (version 7.28.0 from Oct 2012 or later) 
for Internet access (including on Windows):

...

CHANGES IN R-devel UTILITIES

     ?R CMD check --as-cran? checks existence and accessibility of URLs 
in the ?DESCRIPTION? file and in the help files.
"

Which seems to suggest libcurl support is optional.   The build process 
seems to correctly detect that I have an old version of libcurl

checking if libcurl version >= 7.28.0... no

 > capabilities('libcurl')
libcurl
   FALSE

But when I try to build any packages with R.devel (for pre-release 
testing) I get lots and lots of Notes/errors like:


Found the following (possibly) invalid URLs:
   URL: http://statnet.org/
     From: DESCRIPTION
     Status: Error
     Message: curlGetHeaders is not supported on this platform

Maybe this url check should first verify that libcurl is available?


If it is the case that libcurl is required for R CMD check --as-cran, 
I'll try to follow up with R debian for how to get appropriate version. 
(seems like libcurl 7.28 is not yet included in a stable Debian release?)

Thanks for your help,

best,
  -skye

On 27.01.2015 22:09, Skye Bender-deMoll wrote:
> Dear R devel,
>
> Is libcurl support required to run R.devel, or is it optional?
>
> I'm compiling R.devel on an older Debian machine  that only has libcurl
> version 7.21.0
>
> The R news file says
>
> "
> Sun, 25 Jan 2015
> CHANGES IN R-devel NEW FEATURES
>
>      Optional use of ?libcurl? (version 7.28.0 from Oct 2012 or later)
> for Internet access (including on Windows):
>
> ...
>
> CHANGES IN R-devel UTILITIES
>
>      ?R CMD check --as-cran? checks existence and accessibility of URLs
> in the ?DESCRIPTION? file and in the help files.
> "
>
> Which seems to suggest libcurl support is optional.   The build process
> seems to correctly detect that I have an old version of libcurl
>
> checking if libcurl version >= 7.28.0... no
>
>  > capabilities('libcurl')
> libcurl
>    FALSE
>
> But when I try to build any packages with R.devel (for pre-release
> testing) I get lots and lots of Notes/errors like:
>
>
> Found the following (possibly) invalid URLs:
>    URL: http://statnet.org/
>      From: DESCRIPTION
>      Status: Error
>      Message: curlGetHeaders is not supported on this platform
>
> Maybe this url check should first verify that libcurl is available?
>
>
> If it is the case that libcurl is required for R CMD check --as-cran,
> I'll try to follow up with R debian for how to get appropriate version.
> (seems like libcurl 7.28 is not yet included in a stable Debian release?)
>
> Thanks for your help,
Is this a recent version of R-devel? Which svn? The check is rather new 
and may have changed the days before you wrote.

Best,
Uwe Ligges


> best,
>   -skye
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

Dear Uwe, CRAN.

We test against R.devel trunk nightly.  I just re-ran R CMD check again 
with R Under development (unstable) (2015-01-31 r67686), and now I just 
get the message:

"Checking URLs requires 'libcurl' support in the R build"

without the list of errors for every single URL.  So seems like the 
issue has been resolved!

thanks,
  -skye


On 02/01/2015 12:26 AM, Uwe Ligges wrote:
>
>
> On 27.01.2015 22:09, Skye Bender-deMoll wrote:
>> Dear R devel,
>>
>> Is libcurl support required to run R.devel, or is it optional?
>>
>> I'm compiling R.devel on an older Debian machine  that only has
libcurl
>> version 7.21.0
>>
>> The R news file says
>>
>> "
>> Sun, 25 Jan 2015
>> CHANGES IN R-devel NEW FEATURES
>>
>>       Optional use of ???libcurl??? (version 7.28.0 from Oct 2012 or
later)
>> for Internet access (including on Windows):
>>
>> ...
>>
>> CHANGES IN R-devel UTILITIES
>>
>>       ???R CMD check --as-cran??? checks existence and accessibility of
URLs
>> in the ???DESCRIPTION??? file and in the help files.
>> "
>>
>> Which seems to suggest libcurl support is optional.   The build process
>> seems to correctly detect that I have an old version of libcurl
>>
>> checking if libcurl version >= 7.28.0... no
>>
>>   > capabilities('libcurl')
>> libcurl
>>     FALSE
>>
>> But when I try to build any packages with R.devel (for pre-release
>> testing) I get lots and lots of Notes/errors like:
>>
>>
>> Found the following (possibly) invalid URLs:
>>     URL: http://statnet.org/
>>       From: DESCRIPTION
>>       Status: Error
>>       Message: curlGetHeaders is not supported on this platform
>>
>> Maybe this url check should first verify that libcurl is available?
>>
>>
>> If it is the case that libcurl is required for R CMD check --as-cran,
>> I'll try to follow up with R debian for how to get appropriate
version.
>> (seems like libcurl 7.28 is not yet included in a stable Debian
release?)
>>
>> Thanks for your help,
>
> Is this a recent version of R-devel? Which svn? The check is rather new
> and may have changed the days before you wrote.
>
> Best,
> Uwe Ligges
>
>
>
>> best,
>>    -skye
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>