R devel - Mar 2015 - Best way to handle dependency on non-CRAN package / large data package?

Thanks Dirk. I'm looking at it now.

At first glance your documentation brings up a good limitation of simply
telling users to type "devtools::install_github()". Namely, what
happens
when the census bureau updates their shapefiles, and I subsequently decide
to update the package? Or if I discover an error in the package and decide
to update it? The choroplethr package could have a dependency, and it's not
clear how to make that dependency explicit to the user.



On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 9:22 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org>
wrote:
>
> On 12 March 2015 at 08:41, arilamstein at gmail.com wrote:
> | But I don't know if this is the best way to do this, or if there is
> | anything else to consider. I have never had to manage package
> dependencies
> | outside of CRAN, and have always thought of CRAN as being a "closed
> | ecosystem", where there were not any dependencies outside of CRAN.
> |
> | Can anyone provide guidance on this?
>
> drat can help with this problem. Have a look at
>
>      http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/code/drat.html
>
> as well as my blog and the GitHub repo of drat.
>
> In a nutshell, it creates repositories you can access via update.packages()
> and install.packages() as if they were CRAN or BioC.  It also uses GitHub
> to
> automagically provide a repository server via the webserverd
"embedded" in
> each GitHub repo (and turned on as soon as you use the gh-pages branch).
>
> Some package authors have turned to using drat to distribute packages
> (often
> in addition to CRAN, you can also do it instead of CRAN given a constraint
> as
> here).  One such package author and I are working on another short blog
> post
> detailing just this.  If you want, I can send you an 'informal
preview' as
> yet another source of documentation.
>
> Dirk
>
> --
> http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org
>
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On 12 March 2015 at 09:40, arilamstein at gmail.com wrote:
| Thanks Dirk. I'm looking at it now.?
| 
| At first glance your documentation brings up a good limitation of simply
| telling users to type "devtools::install_github()". Namely, what
happens when
| the census bureau updates their shapefiles, and I subsequently decide to
update
| the package? Or if I discover an error in the package and decide to update it?
| The choroplethr package could have a dependency, and it's not clear how to
make
| that dependency explicit to the user.?

100% agree. 

In writing drat, and talking to R users about it, I surprisingly often find
many (advanced) R users who seem to not use update.packages() at all.

R itself has your problem solved by providing repositries. And drat makes
creating and filling repositories (the author side) vey easy -- and that we
also aid the user side as installation as well as regular updates fall back
onto standard R functions: install.packages(), update.packages().  And this
does not require any additinal or manual steps on the part of the users (once
drat:::add(...)  has been added to their startup files).

So for this example, you could add a versioned Depends: in the
shapefile-using package and update the drat repository with an updated
shapefile package.  Users of drat and update.packages() would get updates
automagically. 

Dirk

-- 
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org

Hi Dirk,

I'm interested in pursing this but I haven't been able to figure how to
to
make it work.  Here's what I have so far:

install.packages("drat")
library(drat)
addRepo("arilamstein")

I (obviously) have a copy of the choroplethrZip github repo locally. I
typed:

git checkout gh-pages
git push

I gather that this is what I needed to to do make the repo web-accessible.
Although I found this step a bit confusing because it looks like github has
a pages feature for both accounts and projects.

And now the instructions say to type something like:
> insertPackage("~/Desktop/choroplethrZip_1.0.0.tar.gz")
Error in insertPackage("~/Desktop/choroplethrZip_1.0.0.tar.gz") :
  Directory ~/git/drat not found
FALSE

The file I provided is what was created by calling devtools::build() on my
R package that I want to distribute.

Can you explain this error message to me and tell me what I'm doing wrong?
I've read several of the documents on drat but am unclear on whether I need
modify my existing repository in any way in order to make it work with drat.

Thanks.

Ari

On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 9:58 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org>
wrote:
>
> On 12 March 2015 at 09:40, arilamstein at gmail.com wrote:
> | Thanks Dirk. I'm looking at it now.
> |
> | At first glance your documentation brings up a good limitation of simply
> | telling users to type "devtools::install_github()". Namely,
what happens
> when
> | the census bureau updates their shapefiles, and I subsequently decide to
> update
> | the package? Or if I discover an error in the package and decide to
> update it?
> | The choroplethr package could have a dependency, and it's not clear
how
> to make
> | that dependency explicit to the user.
>
> 100% agree.
>
> In writing drat, and talking to R users about it, I surprisingly often find
> many (advanced) R users who seem to not use update.packages() at all.
>
> R itself has your problem solved by providing repositries. And drat makes
> creating and filling repositories (the author side) vey easy -- and that we
> also aid the user side as installation as well as regular updates fall back
> onto standard R functions: install.packages(), update.packages().  And this
> does not require any additinal or manual steps on the part of the users
> (once
> drat:::add(...)  has been added to their startup files).
>
> So for this example, you could add a versioned Depends: in the
> shapefile-using package and update the drat repository with an updated
> shapefile package.  Users of drat and update.packages() would get updates
> automagically.
>
> Dirk
>
> --
> http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org
>
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