[R] valid package repositories

[Peter Langfelder]

On Mon, Oct 2, 2017 at 7:47 AM, Federico Calboli
<federico.calboli at kuleuven.be> wrote:

>
> Thus my question: when can I consider a library to be properly published and really publicly available?  CRAN and BioConductor are clearly gold standards.  What about Github?  I am currently using the rule ‘not on CRAN == outright rejection’.  If Github is as good as CRAN I will include it on my list of ‘the code is available in a functional state as claimed’.

CRAN has certain rules that are necessary for CRAN to function but may
not be necessary for a package to be useful (e.g. size of data in a
non-data package, licensing, run time of examples etc). I would ask
two things from developers of a new package: 1. package is available
for download from somewhere public; 2. package passes R CMD check
without errors or warnings. Possibly also an explanation why they
cannot upload the package to CRAN or Bioconductor, but I would not
make the acceptance by CRAN or Bioconductor a condition for
publishing.

Just my humble opinion.

Peter