R devel - Oct 2018 - CRAN Feature Request: install.data (task.view="Cluster")

Hi

I wish that it was possible to install datasets from R packages
without installing the rest of the packages.
Mainly for testing purposes or writing examples.

Assuming that there's a top level data directory (which there
isn't):
> install.data (package=c ("s20x", "R330") )
Which would install all datasets from the s20x and R330 packages,
without installing the complete packages, with some form of
documentation and presumably with license info.

Or:
> install.data (task.view="Cluster")
Which would install all the datasets from the Cluster task view, again
without installing the complete packages, with some form of
documentation and presumably with license info.

Documentation could be the Rd files or a reduced form of the pdf/html
files, covering the datasets only.

Also, it would be good to have search tools too.
> search.data (task.view="Cluster", keyword="something",
all.Rd.fields=TRUE, condition="n.numeric.vars >= 3")
Which would return a list of datasets from the Cluster task view with
keyword "something" (from anywhere in the Rd file) and 3 or more
numeric variables, including info on the (dataset) name, package
(name), license, header, dimensions and possibly description.

Obviously, these functions would not be part of CRAN itself, however,
CRAN would need to store packages in a different way for this to work.

Unless I'm missing something?


kind regards
Abs

On 28/10/2018 5:08 PM, Abs Spurdle wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I wish that it was possible to install datasets from R packages
> without installing the rest of the packages.
> Mainly for testing purposes or writing examples.
> 
> Assuming that there's a top level data directory (which there
isn't):
>> install.data (package=c ("s20x", "R330") )
> 
> Which would install all datasets from the s20x and R330 packages,
> without installing the complete packages, with some form of
> documentation and presumably with license info.
> 
> Or:
>> install.data (task.view="Cluster")
> 
> Which would install all the datasets from the Cluster task view, again
> without installing the complete packages, with some form of
> documentation and presumably with license info.
> 
> Documentation could be the Rd files or a reduced form of the pdf/html
> files, covering the datasets only.
> 
> Also, it would be good to have search tools too.
>> search.data (task.view="Cluster",
keyword="something", all.Rd.fields=TRUE,
condition="n.numeric.vars >= 3")
> 
> Which would return a list of datasets from the Cluster task view with
> keyword "something" (from anywhere in the Rd file) and 3 or more
> numeric variables, including info on the (dataset) name, package
> (name), license, header, dimensions and possibly description.
> 
> Obviously, these functions would not be part of CRAN itself, however,
> CRAN would need to store packages in a different way for this to work.
> 
> Unless I'm missing something?
This is something you should write yourself.  Do it by downloading the 
package, unpacking it, then extracting the data.  I suspect everything 
you need is already built into R, in the code that installs a package. 
You just need to rewrite it to do much less.

You shouldn't ask CRAN to do it, they've got enough on their plates.

Duncan Murdoch