[Rd] Linking to the BH package introduces CRAN warnings

[Romain François]

> Le 5 nov. 2014 à 14:45, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> a écrit :
> 
> 
> On 5 November 2014 at 14:11, Romain Francois wrote:
> | > Le 5 nov. 2014 à 13:43, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> a écrit :
> | > You are NOT forced or required to use the Boost distributions header __as R
> | > comes with the equivalent functionality__ via the Rmath.h header file from R.
> | > Which has functionality that Rcpp provides to you in scalar and vector form.
> | > 
> | > And there are probably several dozen examples of using the R distribution
> | > functions from Rcpp.
> | > 
> | > So this is _precisely_ what I suggested several mails ago: do your homework,
> | > identify which header is causing it.  And the obvious next step is then to
> | > not use the header.
> | 
> | So why these headers are shipped with BH then. 
> 
> The BH "builder" (ie the script local/scripts/CreateBoost.sh in the repo)
> actively selects a number of Boost libraries [1], and uses the Boost tool
> 'bcp' to copy these (header-only) libraries -- plus all their dependencies.
> The set of "selected components" grew out of initial requirements, plus
> requests received since the package was created.  [2]
> 
> Now, just because some files within a library tickle a warning does not seem
> to imply that all use of said warning is impossible. By my count, over two
> dozen CRAN packages currently depend on BH [3] indicating some usefulness of BH,
> including to the dplyr package you work on.

Yeah so that’s like « we’ll sell you horticultural bulbs, but only use them for indoor culture of tomatoes, ‘cause you know it’s illegal to grow weed » whatever. 

Believe me, I’d love for dplyr not to depend on BH, which we use for unordered_map. 

> Policies and requirements do of cause charge, but I am not aware of any of
> the two dozen package tickling this issue -- their use case is just fine,
> thank you, and their requirements lead to the inclusion of the header
> currently comprised in the package.
> 
> I hope this answers your question. Should you have further questions
> concerning the BH package, could you be so kind as to bringing them to
> appropriate list [4] or filing a ticket on GH?

This was not really a question, so yes I guess it answers it. Not your fault, just the user’s fault of using something that is shipped yet is unusable. You’re in the clear. 

> Thanks, Dirk
> 
> [1] "components" may be a better term so we avoid the association with "linking"
> [2] Another one of these requests just came in this week asking for circular_buffer.
> [3] http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/BH/index.html
> [4] http://lists.r-forge.r-project.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/boostheaders-devel
> 
> -- 
> http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org