R devel - Oct 2008 - 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
<http://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

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
> <http://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
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

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
> <http://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
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

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
> <http://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
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel