[Rd] FOSS licence with BuildVignettes: false

[Ben Bolker]

Uwe Ligges <ligges <at> statistik.tu-dortmund.de> writes:

> 
> Setting
> 
> BuildVignettes: false
> 
> is fine if it is possible to build the vignettes, and the latter is 
> checked in CRAN incoming checks (but not the daily checks).
> 
> Uwe Ligges

   Hmmm.  I was told by the CRAN maintainers on Aug 7 that

CRAN> "FOSS licence with BuildVignettes: false" is not a false positive, 
CRAN> is fixable, and is mentioned at
CRAN> http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-devel/R-exts.html#
CRAN>    The-DESCRIPTION-file as not to be used in an FOSS package.

  (I had said in my previous e-mail to CRAN that all NOTEs were
false positives, minor or not fixable.)  Admittedly this e-mail
nowhere said explicitly "you must fix this or we will not accept
it for CRAN", but that was certainly the impression I got.

TFM says

R-exts>   [BuildVignettes: false] should only be used exceptionally, for 
R-exts> example if the PDFs include large figures which are not part of the 
R-exts> package sources (and hence only in packages which do not have an
R-exts> Open Source license).

   So either I'm confused (always a possibility!) or it seems
there are some inconsistencies here ...

> On 15.09.2013 22:13, Viechtbauer Wolfgang (STAT) wrote:
> > Dear All,
> >
> > I have been checking the metafor package against R-devel.
> >
> > R CMD check --as-cran metafor
> >
> > yields one note:
> >
> > FOSS licence with BuildVignettes: false
> >
> > Yes, I have 'BuildVignettes: FALSE' in my DESCRIPTION file. 
> I see at http://developer.r-project.org/blosxom.cgi/R-devel/NEWS:
> >
> > Tue, 25 Jun 2013
> > CHANGES IN R-devel UTILITIES
> >
> >      'R CMD check --as-cran' warns about a false value 
> of the 'DESCRIPTION' field 'BuildVignettes' for Open
> Source packages, and ignores it (as an Open Source package 
> needs to have complete sources for its vignettes).
> >
> > My questions are:
> >
> > 1) Is this going to be an issue if I submit a new 
> version of the metafor package to CRAN right now?
> >
> > 2) And if the answer to 1 is "Not right now": Is this going 
> to become an issue in the future? In other words, is
> it the goal to only allow packages with BuildVignettes=true 
> if they have an FOSS license at some point in
> the future?
> >
> > Best,
> > Wolfgang
> >