Diagnose Old-Style or Unsafe Calls in inst/CITATION — lab_citation

Flags an inst/CITATION that calls the old-style citEntry() (use bibentry()) or personList() and as.personList() (use c() on person objects), or that calls packageDescription(), library() or require(). R passes the file a meta object holding the package's DESCRIPTION, so it needs none of those, and each assumes the package is already installed.

Usage

lab_citation_file(path = ".", verbose = TRUE)

Arguments

path: Character. Path to package directory
verbose: Logical. Print diagnostic messages

Value

checktor_check_result() with passed, issues, message.

Details

As in R, the fallback if (!exists("meta") || is.null(meta)) meta <- packageDescription("pkg") is exempt: a top-level if with exactly that condition and no else. The file is parsed and never run, so a name in a comment or a string is not a call. A CITATION that does not parse is reported, with the line R stops at. A CITATION that .Rbuildignore excludes is not in the tarball and is not read.

Source

The CRAN incoming check (R CMD check --as-cran) NOTEs "Package CITATION file contains call(s) to old-style citEntry(). Please use bibentry() instead." and "... old-style personList() or as.personList(). Please use c() on person objects instead.", and lists calls to packageDescription, library and require. Writing R Extensions, under "CITATION files", says "It is desirable (and essential for CRAN) that the CITATION file does not contain calls to functions such as packageDescription which assume the package is installed in a library tree on the package search path." devtools::check() turns the incoming check off by default. See vignette("check-sources", package = "checktor") for how every check maps to its source.

Examples

pkg <- example_diagnose_scenario("general_examples/citation_file_bad.CITATION",
                                 show_content = FALSE)
lab_citation_file(pkg, verbose = FALSE)$issues
#> [1] "inst/CITATION:6 (packageDescription() assumes the package is installed; read the DESCRIPTION from the `meta` object R passes to the file)"
#> [2] "inst/CITATION:8 (citEntry() is old-style; use bibentry())"                                                                                
#> [3] "inst/CITATION:11 (personList() is old-style; use c() on person objects)"                                                                  
unlink(pkg, recursive = TRUE)