[Rd] new function to tools/utils package: dependencies based on DESCRIPTION file

[Gábor Csárdi]

FWIW, the `desc` package can extract dependencies from a local
DESCRIPTION, and it is lightweight. It only depends on small, R-only
packages (R6 and crayon).

❯ desc::desc_get_deps(".")
     type       package version
1 Imports           DBI       *
2 Imports      markdown       *
3 Imports rhandsontable       *
4 Imports       RSQLite       *
5 Imports         shiny       *
6 Imports      shinyAce       *
7 Imports       shinyjs       *
8 Imports   shinytoastr       *
9 Imports       whisker       *

Another alternative is the 'remotes' package, this has no dependencies at all:

❯ remotes::local_package_deps(".")
[1] "DBI"           "markdown"      "rhandsontable" "RSQLite"
[5] "shiny"         "shinyAce"      "shinyjs"       "shinytoastr"
[9] "whisker"

It is at https://github.com/MangoTheCat/remotes, but note that it does
have some other bugs: https://github.com/MangoTheCat/remotes/issues

Disclaimer: I wrote most of 'desc' and parts of 'remotes', and maintain both.

Gábor

On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 8:37 AM, Joris Meys <jorismeys at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Jan,
>
> It is unavoidable to have OS and R dependencies for devtools. The building
> process for packages is both OS and R dependent, so devtools has to be too
> according to my understanding.
>
> Cheers
> Joris
> On 14 Jun 2016 18:56, "Jan Górecki" <J.Gorecki at wit.edu.pl> wrote:
>
> Hi Thierry,
>
> I'm perfectly aware of it. Any idea when devtools would be shipped as
> a base R package, or at least recommended package? To actually answer
> the problem described in my email.
> I have range of useful functions available tools/utils packages which
> are shipped together with R. They doesn't require any OS dependencies
> or R dependencies, unlike devtools which requires both. Installing
> unnecessary OS dependencies and R dependencies just for such a simple
> wrapper doesn't seem to be an elegant way to address it, therefore my
> proposal to include that simple function in tools, or utils package.
>
> Regards,
> Jan Gorecki
>
> On 14 June 2016 at 16:17, Thierry Onkelinx <thierry.onkelinx at inbo.be> wrote:
>> Dear Jan,
>>
>> Similar functionality is available in devtools::dev_package_deps()
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> ir. Thierry Onkelinx
>> Instituut voor natuur- en bosonderzoek / Research Institute for Nature and
>> Forest
>> team Biometrie & Kwaliteitszorg / team Biometrics & Quality Assurance
>> Kliniekstraat 25
>> 1070 Anderlecht
>> Belgium
>>
>> To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more
> than
>> asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able to say
> what
>> the experiment died of. ~ Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher
>> The plural of anecdote is not data. ~ Roger Brinner
>> The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not
>> ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of
> data.
>> ~ John Tukey
>>
>> 2016-06-14 16:54 GMT+02:00 Jan Górecki <J.Gorecki at wit.edu.pl>:
>>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Packages tools and utils have a lot of useful stuff for R developers.
>>> I find one task still not as straightforward as it could. Simply to
>>> extract dependencies of a package from DESCRIPTION file (before it is
>>> even installed to library). This would be valuable in automation of CI
>>> setup in a more meta-data driven way.
>>> The simple function below, I know it is short and simple, but having
>>> it to be defined in each CI workflow is a pain, it could be already
>>> available in tools or utils namespace.
>>>
>>> package.dependencies.dcf <- function(file = "DESCRIPTION", which =
>>> c("Depends","Imports","LinkingTo")) {
>>>     stopifnot(file.exists(file), is.character(which))
>>>     which_all <- c("Depends", "Imports", "LinkingTo", "Suggests",
>>> "Enhances")
>>>     if (identical(which, "all"))
>>>         which <- which_all
>>>     else if (identical(which, "most"))
>>>         which <- c("Depends", "Imports", "LinkingTo", "Suggests")
>>>     stopifnot(which %in% which_all)
>>>     dcf <- read.dcf(file, which)
>>>     # parse fields
>>>     raw.deps <- unlist(strsplit(dcf[!is.na(dcf)], ",", fixed = TRUE))
>>>     # strip stated dependency version
>>>     deps <- trimws(sapply(strsplit(trimws(raw.deps), "(", fixed =
>>> TRUE), `[[`, 1L))
>>>     # exclude base R pkgs
>>>     base.pkgs <- c("R", rownames(installed.packages(priority = "base")))
>>>     setdiff(deps, base.pkgs)
>>> }
>>>
>>> This allows to easily install all package dependencies just based on
>>> DESCRIPTION file, so simplify that in custom CI workflows to:
>>>
>>> if (length(pkgs<-package.dependencies.dcf(which="all")))
>>> install.packages(pkgs)
>>>
>>> And would not require to install custom packages or shell scripts.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Jan Gorecki
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>
>>
>
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