[Rd] Test suite failures in R-devel_2017-02-25_r72256

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On 27/02/2017 09:30, Peter Simons wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I tried compiling the latest pre-release for R 3.3.3 for the NixOS Linux
> distribution [1], but the build fails during the "make check" phase
> because of the following 2 issues:

Hmm, R-devel (your subject line) is not a pre-release of R 3.3.3: it is 
'R Under development' for what is planned as R 3.4.0.  Pre-release 
tarballs for 3.3.3 are things like R-rc_2017-02-26_r72260.tar.gz (and 
were previously labelled R-beta).

Your first point only occurs in R-devel, and was something already 
reported and under investigation.  Note that test does not actually 
depend on network access: it depends on having an accessible CRAN 
mirror.  The latter could be local (and is on the CRAN check farm, for 
example).  So we have been working on a more sophisticated condition to 
run that test.

There are lots of possible check environments: it is very time-consuming 
to check them all and reasonable coverage is only attempted once a 
pre-release reaches 'alpha' status -- 3.4.0 has not done so but is 
planned to be in late March.

I have just re-checked on Linux, and R 3.3.3 RC passed its checks 
without Internet access (which is checked for where needed).

I also re-checked 3.3.3 RC without recommended packages and got the 
expected messages about incomplete testing but no failures except in 
'make check-recommended' (expected!).

Our posting guide does ask you to include the output of sessionInfo(): 
that would have avoided the version confusion (and might even have 
alerted you to it).


> 1) The "tools" test in "tests/Examples" requires network access, which
>    it doesn't have in our build environment. Therefore, it fails as
>    follows according to "tools-Ex.Rout.fail":
>
>    | [...]
>    | > set.seed(11)
>    | > ## End(Don't show)
>    | > pdb <- CRAN_package_db()
>    | Warning in url(sprintf("%s/%s", cran, path), open = "rb") :
>    |   URL 'http://CRAN.R-project.org/web/packages/packages.rds': status was 'Couldn't resolve host name'
>    | Error in url(sprintf("%s/%s", cran, path), open = "rb") :
>    |   cannot open the connection to 'http://CRAN.R-project.org/web/packages/packages.rds'
>    | Calls: CRAN_package_db -> as.data.frame -> read_CRAN_object -> gzcon -> url
>    | Execution halted
>
>    I'm wondering whether it would be possible to extend the test suite
>    with a configure-time flag that disable tests which depend on network
>    access? My experience is that most modern Linux distributions run
>    their builds in a restricted environment and therefore will run into
>    trouble if the suite assumes that it can access the Internet.
>
> 2) When R is compiled with the --without-recommended-packages flag
>    (which is our preferred configuration), the "base" test in
>    "tests/Examples" fails, apparently because it depends on MASS. I'm
>    citing from "base-Ex.Rout.fail":
>
>    | >  ## The string "foo" and the symbol 'foo' can be used interchangably here:
>    | >  stopifnot( identical(isNamespaceLoaded(  "foo"   ), FALSE),
>    | +             identical(isNamespaceLoaded(quote(foo)), FALSE),
>    | +             identical(isNamespaceLoaded(quote(stats)), statL))
>    | >
>    | > hasM <- isNamespaceLoaded("MASS") # (to restore if needed)
>    | > Mns <- asNamespace("MASS") # loads it if not already
>    | Error in loadNamespace(name) : there is no package called 'MASS'
>    | Calls: asNamespace ... tryCatch -> tryCatchList -> tryCatchOne -> <Anonymous>
>    | Execution halted
>
> I hope this helps!
>
> Best regards,
> Peter
>
>
>
> [1] http://nixos.org/
>
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>


-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford