On 2025-02-20 12:36 p.m., Brian Leonard wrote:
Hello there,
[TLDR: I'm curious to know the degree to which including a pure javascript
program (via the V8 package) in an R package affects the potential of passing
CRAN review]
I'm working on implementing an R package to support users of the Psych-DS data
specification<https://github.com/psych-ds>. The package will include a shiny
app with helpful functions for assembling and publishing high-quality datasets in the
behavioral sciences, but one of the core functions will be to validate existing
datasets (local directories) according to the rules of our schema.
We already have this validator functionality set up as a Deno application, and
we can use certain Deno tools, along with esbuild, to generate node-based and
pure-javascript bundled versions of validator.
We'd like to be able to leverage our existing code instead of having to
reinvent the wheel for the R context. If we try to publish our package to CRAN
with this javascript script as a core part of the package's functionality, will
that severely affect our chances of passing the review process? I know that
having sufficient unit tests and well documented processes is crucial to
getting a package through, but the validator code in this scenario would be
stringy and minified, and the bundle would not include unit tests for all the
validator's internal functions. Is it the case that a dependency like this is
equally subject to CRAN review scrutiny, or would it be sufficient to have all
the R-based components comply with CRAN requirements?
I am not a member of CRAN, so I can't give you authoritative advice on
this. But I think one issue is that if you are only including minified
code, then they wouldn't see that as the original source. My rgl
package includes a few thousand lines of Javascript code which is
minified when installed; the tarball contains the original source.
Duncan Murdoch
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