guess_fileSize should not cause create_codemeta() to fail just bc a dependency isn't installed.

[maelle]

but on a Linux server, for https://github.com/ropensci/infx

codemetar::create_codemeta("repos/ropensci/infx")
Error in run(bin, args = real_cmdargs, stdout_line_callback = real_callback(stdout),  :
  System command error

Any idea what could be the reason for this @cboettig?

[cboettig]

Looks like this error occurs when devtools::build fails due to a missing dependency. (you'd think it would be possible to build a package without dependencies installed, but apparently not, even with vignettes=FALSE. (Also we should probably replace devtools::build with pkgbuild::build eventually).

I suppose we could call devtools::install() ahead of building, but I think the better behavior would by to wrap the guess_fileSize function in a tryCatch so it just fails gracefully if the package cannot be built.

Really, the whole idea of building a package to guess fileSize is a nice statistic to have, but also a potentially fragile and computationally expensive operation and so should both fail gracefully and have a way to toggle off. I'll adjust this issue title to reflect these outstanding issues.

https://github.com/ropensci/codemetar/blob/master/R/guess_metadata.R#L225

• guess_fileSize should fail gracefully if package cannot be built.
• User should be able to easily opt of out of guess_fileSize behavior (perhaps with a default behavior set as an option so it's easy to toggle globally too).

Thoughts @maelle ?

[maelle]

Do you use the dev branch? Devtools should have been replaced in it

[maelle]

Agree with the changes proposed

[cboettig]

👍 no, sorry, I ran the above checks with master. Are you seeing this error with the dev version? Are we due for a PR and new release soon?

[maelle]

Yes there is a PR from dev to master, not sure yet what should be the criteria for the release i.e what to fix/improve before merging?

[maelle]

And i only use the dev version nowadays

[cboettig]

Sounds like we should merge dev to master if that's what you're using anyway! And plan a release soon?

I have simple criteria for a release workflow:

• I like to have any dev merged into master once they are passing tests and implemented a feature (i.e. to keep PRs small; basically the same way you do for branch->dev without the extra abstraction).
• I like to release to CRAN whenever (a) master is better than CRAN's version, (b) we've merged most open PRs / are not planning any writing/merging new PRs soon, and (c) we're release ready (updated NEWS and passing tests, haven't just had a CRAN release).

So I think ?

[maelle]

What I implemented is not a global option to toggle though.

[maelle]

@cboettig do you have a favorite example of a package with such a toggle option?

[cboettig]

not off hand, but I was thinking just setting something in options. e.g. options(codemetar_build_package = FALSE). Then the function can do something like build <- getOptions(codemetar_build_package, TRUE) to default to building.

[maelle]

I think we can close thanks to the default behavior introduced in #239