I wrote an SSH tunneling package (it's on Github
here<https://github.com/wmay/tunnelr>). It runs on Mac, Linux, and Windows, at
least in the environments I've been able to test. I would like to get it on
CRAN if it's possible, but writing automated tests for this package is
nightmarish.
Typically, connecting to a server through the package requires manually
entering a password, which I don't think I can automate. (I don't want to allow
the package to enter passwords itself for security reasons.) An alternative is
to set up public and private rsa keys so that no password is required. That
option also gets complicated.
I could imagine setting up a server solely for testing this, with a user that
has no password, though that sounds scary. But then what happens if the server
goes down?
A second challenge applies specifically to Windows, which is the platform I'm
most concerned about. I'm relying on PuTTY for SSH in Windows. Is there a way
for that to be tested on CRAN?
Should I even worry about CRAN testing for this? Will CRAN accept this package
without tests?
And I was surprised that an SSH tunneling package didn't already exist (I found
it really convenient to control SSH tunneling from within R). Is there another
reason it doesn't exist yet, or is it just the testing challenges?
- Will
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