R help - Oct 2021 - I'd like to request that my R CRAN package is not tested on Solaris OS

Just to add my personal cent to this:  I've had similar issues with an R
package some time ago, which kept crashing somewhat unpredictably in the Solaris
tests.

Debugging was hard because it only happened on Solaris, but in the end it turned
out to be due to serious bugs in the code that only happened to surface in the
Solaris tests.   I would think that it's likely to be the same for your
package, so the segfaults shouldn't be accepted too readily as a platform
quirk.

Best
SE

> On 22 Oct 2021, at 15:47, Marc Schwartz via R-help <r-help at
r-project.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> 1. The CRAN repository policy here:
> 
>  https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/policies.html
> 
> notes:
> 
> "Package authors should make all reasonable efforts to provide
cross-platform portable code. Packages will not normally be accepted that do not
run on at least two of the major R platforms. Cases for Windows-only packages
will be considered, but CRAN may not be the most appropriate place to host
them."
> 
> That would seem to infer that, with reasonable justification, one may be
able to make a request of the CRAN maintainers to exclude at least one of the OS
platforms from testing. A request that would be at the discretion of the CRAN
maintainers and Solaris, in light of the low market prevalence, may be a more
common exclusion as you have noted below.

I agree with Stefan.  Try using valgrind (on Linux) to check for memory
misuse:

R --debugger=valgrind --debugger-args="--leak-check=full
--track-origins=yes"
...
> yourTests()
> q("no")
-Bill


On Fri, Oct 22, 2021 at 7:30 AM Stefan Evert <stefanML at collocations.de>
wrote:
> Just to add my personal cent to this:  I've had similar issues with an
R
> package some time ago, which kept crashing somewhat unpredictably in the
> Solaris tests.
>
> Debugging was hard because it only happened on Solaris, but in the end it
> turned out to be due to serious bugs in the code that only happened to
> surface in the Solaris tests.   I would think that it's likely to be
the
> same for your package, so the segfaults shouldn't be accepted too
readily
> as a platform quirk.
>
> Best
> SE
>
>
> > On 22 Oct 2021, at 15:47, Marc Schwartz via R-help <r-help at
r-project.org>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > 1. The CRAN repository policy here:
> >
> >  https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/policies.html
> >
> > notes:
> >
> > "Package authors should make all reasonable efforts to provide
> cross-platform portable code. Packages will not normally be accepted that
> do not run on at least two of the major R platforms. Cases for Windows-only
> packages will be considered, but CRAN may not be the most appropriate place
> to host them."
> >
> > That would seem to infer that, with reasonable justification, one may
be
> able to make a request of the CRAN maintainers to exclude at least one of
> the OS platforms from testing. A request that would be at the discretion of
> the CRAN maintainers and Solaris, in light of the low market prevalence,
> may be a more common exclusion as you have noted below.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
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