R devel - Aug 2013 - Minimum requirements for package submission

Hi,

I'm a newbie to R package submission. I've written a program using basic
functions inside R to manipulate phylogeny tree data. I've relied on the
APE package. After almost year of working on it, it's time for me to submit
the package and I have very little time to rewrite it as S3/4 style unless
it is required. It's just very basic at the moment with 30+ functions and
there's a driver class. There's a lot of jargon in package submission
and
so it's difficult to understand the Google results. I would appreciate any
help.

1. My functions are very basic. For example, getRoot gets the root of the
current tree (APE phylo object) and getAncestor gets the ancestor to the
current node:

getRoot <- function(cur_Tree){
    return(length(cur_Tree$tip.label)+1)
}

getAncestor <- function(cur_Node, cur_Tree){
...
return(ancestor)
}

Is this okay or do I have to do anything else to submit the package? Later
on (within the next few months) I would have time to convert these
functions to S3/4 but at the moment the most important thing it to get it
out there on CRAN.

2. Does the vignette need to be written in latex or can I get away with
writing all of the requirements in word? (I believe I've seen a vignette
written in word -> pdf)

3. Any other suggestions/links?

Also, I think the R development team has done a phenomenal job with R and
maintaining the package libraries. My intention is not to cut
corners...it's just that I have a program written in R that is complete and
I'd like to submit it. Furthermore, although github is a great resource for
hosting code, my primary objective is to submit the package to CRAN.

Thanks!

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> 1. My functions are very basic. For example, getRoot gets the root of the
> current tree (APE phylo object) and getAncestor gets the ancestor to the
> current node:
>
> getRoot <- function(cur_Tree){
>     return(length(cur_Tree$tip.label)+1)
> }
>
> getAncestor <- function(cur_Node, cur_Tree){
> ...
> return(ancestor)
> }
>
> Is this okay or do I have to do anything else to submit the package? Later
> on (within the next few months) I would have time to convert these
> functions to S3/4 but at the moment the most important thing it to get it
> out there on CRAN.
As long as your package passes R CMD check --as-cran on the
development version of R, CRAN will be happy.  They do not generally
read your source code, and CRAN does not certify that your package is
useful or even correct - so you don't need to worry about what your
package does.
> 2. Does the vignette need to be written in latex or can I get away with
> writing all of the requirements in word? (I believe I've seen a
vignette
> written in word -> pdf)
I don't think you can use word, but you can use Rmarkdown, which is
much simpler than latex.
> 3. Any other suggestions/links?
Make sure you read http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/policies.html

Good luck!

Hadley

-- 
Chief Scientist, RStudio
http://had.co.nz/