[Rd] Is using devtools::release no longer allowed?

[Uwe Ligges]

On 20.08.2014 00:05, Jeroen Ooms wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 8:14 PM, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> wrote:
>>
>> I hereby offer one beer to the first person who shows me how to use RSelenium
>> to drive the webform from a script.
>
> Below is a simple script that simulates the form. No crazy RSelenium
> browser interactions; I just reverse engineered the HTML form. Tested
> and it works.
>
> https://gist.github.com/jeroenooms/48be418e87100d7ea1a2
>
> Not sure if CRAN maintainers will appreciate this, though. The "I have
> read the CRAN policies" confirmation page is probably there for a
> reason.

Indeed! And we want people to actively think about that for each 
submission. Hence I'd appreciate if people take the time to think about 
a submission in advance, e.g. while tackling the cumbersome task to open 
the webbrowser. ;-)


> Also the script will obviously break if CRAN decides to change
> the form parameters. However I do agree with many others that some way
> to automate the submission process is useful. Perhaps Uwe can comment.


The form may change and we do not guarantee back compatibility. More 
parts of the submission / check procedure will be automated (as also 
happened in the past) and this is work in progress.


Please note that CRAN is not intended as a development platform but for 
more or less stable package releases that won't change too frequently, 
hence we expect that for the not so frequent event of a package 
submission, it is *not too much work for the package maintainer* to use 
the webbrowsr for a submission. It is *much more work for the CRAN 
mintainers* telling 40 people each day that they forgot to read the 
policies and that they submit without thinking about the submission 
carefully in advance - with an update few hours later or asking to 
rename a package .....

Best,
Uwe