William Dunlap
2008-Oct-03 18:01 UTC
[Rd] Can DESCRIPTION Maintainer: field contain general URL instead of only email address?
Our firm would like to route support requests through a website instead of using email. However R will refuse to install a package if DESCRIPTION's Maintainer field does not have a valid email adress or the special value "ORPHANED". (The check is done with tools:::.valid_maintainer_field_regexp.) I imagine a typical Maintainer line for the package "foo" might be something like Maintainer: Amalgamated Widget's Support Team <support.amalgamatedwidgets.com/spackage?name=foo> How much does the package system (or CRAN) depend on the Maintainer field being an email address? I can imagine programs would find mailing to an address easier than dealing with a website, but humans would have a better experience with a well designed website. Perhaps we could add an optional %s field to the website so a program could post a small message. Bill Dunlap TIBCO Spotfire Inc. wdunlap tibco.com
christophe dutang
2008-Oct-03 18:13 UTC
[Rd] Can DESCRIPTION Maintainer: field contain general URL instead of only email address?
There is a field URL in the DESCRIPTION file of the package. Could you use it for route support request? 2008/10/3 William Dunlap <wdunlap@tibco.com>> Our firm would like to route support requests through > a website instead of using email. However R will refuse > to install a package if DESCRIPTION's Maintainer field > does not have a valid email adress or the special value > "ORPHANED". (The check is done with > tools:::.valid_maintainer_field_regexp.) > > I imagine a typical Maintainer line for the package "foo" > might be something like > Maintainer: Amalgamated Widget's Support Team > <support.amalgamatedwidgets.com/spackage?name=foo> > > How much does the package system (or CRAN) depend on > the Maintainer field being an email address? I can imagine > programs would find mailing to an address easier than > dealing with a website, but humans would have a better experience > with a well designed website. Perhaps we could add an optional > %s field to the website so a program could post a small message. > > Bill Dunlap > TIBCO Spotfire Inc. > wdunlap tibco.com > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel >[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
Uwe Ligges
2008-Oct-03 18:32 UTC
[Rd] Can DESCRIPTION Maintainer: field contain general URL instead of only email address?
William Dunlap wrote:> Our firm would like to route support requests through > a website instead of using email. However R will refuse > to install a package if DESCRIPTION's Maintainer field > does not have a valid email adress or the special value > "ORPHANED". (The check is done with > tools:::.valid_maintainer_field_regexp.) > > I imagine a typical Maintainer line for the package "foo" > might be something like > Maintainer: Amalgamated Widget's Support Team > <support.amalgamatedwidgets.com/spackage?name=foo> > > How much does the package system (or CRAN) depend on > the Maintainer field being an email address? I can imagine > programs would find mailing to an address easier than > dealing with a website, but humans would have a better experience > with a well designed website. Perhaps we could add an optional > %s field to the website so a program could post a small message.Bill, as already pointed out by Christophe Dutang, there is the URL field. CRAN maintainers rely on the e-mail address given in the package's Maintainer field, particularly to notify (partly automatically like I do) package maintainers if there packages are broken in a new version of R or because the packages they depend on changed. Best wishes, Uwe> Bill Dunlap > TIBCO Spotfire Inc. > wdunlap tibco.com > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list > stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Kasper Daniel Hansen
2008-Oct-03 21:49 UTC
[Rd] Can DESCRIPTION Maintainer: field contain general URL instead of only email address?
Why don't you just give a company email address? Remember this email address is to contact the maintainer. Contacting the maintainer is not only done in order to request support, it could be a copy right issue, code re-use request etc - although I do agree that most emails are probably support requests. Kasper On Oct 3, 2008, at 11:01 , William Dunlap wrote:> Our firm would like to route support requests through > a website instead of using email. However R will refuse > to install a package if DESCRIPTION's Maintainer field > does not have a valid email adress or the special value > "ORPHANED". (The check is done with > tools:::.valid_maintainer_field_regexp.) > > I imagine a typical Maintainer line for the package "foo" > might be something like > Maintainer: Amalgamated Widget's Support Team > <support.amalgamatedwidgets.com/spackage?name=foo> > > How much does the package system (or CRAN) depend on > the Maintainer field being an email address? I can imagine > programs would find mailing to an address easier than > dealing with a website, but humans would have a better experience > with a well designed website. Perhaps we could add an optional > %s field to the website so a program could post a small message. > > Bill Dunlap > TIBCO Spotfire Inc. > wdunlap tibco.com > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list > stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel