Opinion about continuous installation

[zhengle-advantaseeds]

The package(v.0.1.0) did a great job. In the continuous installation option, it would be useful that the app sync to the online repository when the internet available. Otherwise, the app will start without updating if the internet unavailable. Thanks

[zhengle-advantaseeds]

Here is the solution I proposed for it:
In ./utils/package_manager.R
add "RCurl" to init_pkgs

In ./utils/get_app_from_app_url.R
modify the get_remote_version by adding:
get_remote_version = function(...){ if(!RCurl::url.exists('www.bitbucket.org'))return('none') ... }

In ./utils/ensure.R
modify the cran_pkg_version by adding:
cran_pkg_version = function(pkg, cran_url){ if(RCurl::url.exists(cran_url)){ ... } else { packageVersion(pkg) } }

[Dripdrop12]

What do you think about this simple ping wrapper?

ping_site <- function(site_url) {
  !as.logical(system(paste("ping -n 1", site_url)))
}

I am thinking we can just ping "www.google.com" once. If the ping fails, don't install anything and just load packages. I'll push a commit tonight.

[Dripdrop12]

I'd like to reduce the number of package dependencies, and there is a catch-22 here. If we use RCurl to test our internet connection, we still have to install it from the internet. ping is always available to us ;)

[Dripdrop12]

Check out commit 1dd34f0

[rareaquaticbadger]

Hi there,

Really liking this package! Currently though, I can't run the example_app as I'm getting a "Please connect to the internet and try again" message.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think this may be to be due to our company firewall not allowing pings, and it's something I can't seem change without admin privileges. Is there a logical option to ignore your ping_site() wrapper?

zhengle-advantaseeds RCurl solution works for me: RCurl::url.exists('www.google.com') returns TRUE, but ping_site("www.google.com") is returning FALSE.

[Dripdrop12]

@zhengle-advantaseeds is pretty smart, so I'm not surprised ;). How about we add an option to ping or use RCurl for the internet connection check? Would you like that solution?

[rareaquaticbadger]

Hi @Dripdrop12, yes, that would be great! Either an option to use RCurl or just to disable the ping check would be useful for those of us with overly restrictive firewall settings.

Thanks!

[zhengle-advantaseeds]

I think @Dripdrop12's ping_site is faster; because it does not require another package. Maybe we can dig into the RCurl package to extract the url.exists function and integrate into the RInno package.

[Dripdrop12]

@rareaquaticbadger does !httr::http_error("www.google.com") work for you? We are already using httr, and it seems to accomplish what we need from ping_site

[Dripdrop12]

@rareaquaticbadger Please re-open the issue if httr::http_error is not going to work for you; we've switched it over, and I hope that works!