CRAN archive notification

[jeffreyevans]

Does anybody know how to contact the author of this package? He is being unresponsive to issue requests on GitHub and not responding to CRAN regarding check errors. CRAN maintainers are getting ready to archive the velox package from the repositories.

From CRAN
"We have repeatedly asked for an update fixing the check problems with no reply from the maintainer thus far. Thus, package velox is now scheduled for archival on 2020-03-17, and archiving this will necessitate also archiving its strong reverse dependencies."

[lbusett]

@jeffreyevans I think here you can find a different email address and contact info:

https://icr.ethz.ch/people/hunziker/

it would be a pity to lose this package!

Lorenzo

[lbusett]

@jeffreyevans

No, forget about the previous message - most probably outdated. I now tried contacting the mainteiner on linkedin at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hunzikp/

, though unfortunately his contact info does not include an email address.

HTH

[Jean-Romain]

Does anybody knows what was the issue?

[mikoontz]

Here's the snapshot of the CRAN checks from just before the package was archived:

https://cran-archive.r-project.org/web/checks/2020/2020-03-17_check_results_velox.html

[Jean-Romain]

I could easily fix it. But if the maintainer is not responding this won't be useful.

[mikoontz]

Gotcha. Thanks for taking a look! Is there a means for someone else to take over maintainer duties, or does the original maintainer have to approve first?

[Jean-Romain]

We cannot submit a fix on CRAN for the maintainer. He could agree for transferring the role of maintainer to somebody else. But for that we need to get in touch with the current maintainer.

[jeffreyevans]

Hello all, I received a nice email from Philipp Hunziker (included below) regarding this issue. His current email is hunzikp@gmail.com<mailto:hunzikp@gmail.com>. It sounds like he is not intending on maintaining the package any longer but, is more than willing to turn over maintenance to anybody that wants to take the package over. I should point out that I moved the `velox` dependency to the `exactextractr` (https://github.com/isciences/exactextractr and on CRAN) package which, not only benchmarks better than `velox`, but does not require any object coercion to a different object class. In the case of large spatial-temporal data I have found `velox` coercion to add quite a bit of overhead. The `exactextractr` package is intended for only extracting raster values and does not provide rasterization functionality. For this, I use the `fasterize` (https://github.com/ecohealthalliance/fasterize and on CRAN) package, which has also recently updated its C code to work under C++17 compiler requirements. Both of these packages require a `sf` class object but are easily coercible to `sp` classes using `x <- methods::as(x, "Spatial")`. Currently, the `exactextractr` package only operates on polygons but, I have had some correspondence with the developer and he is planning on adding support for points and lines. After benchmarking, we found that operating on the the raw value list object that `exactextractr:: exactextractr` outputs is much faster than using the internal function argument for outputting statistics. This is likely because we are using apply type functions and not for loops or operating in the tidyverse. Best, Jeffrey Evans Jeffrey S. Evans, Ph.D., | Senior Landscape Ecologist & Biometrician The Nature Conservancy | Protected Lands Science Visiting Professor | University of Wyoming | Zoology & Physology Laramie, WY | jeffrey_evans@tnc.org<mailto:jeffrey_evans@tnc.org> | (970) 672-6766<tel:(970)%20672-6766> Hi folks, Hope you're doing well! Sorry for not being on top of this sooner. As you might have guessed, I'm not actively maintaining velox anymore (and the gmail autofilter grouped these mails as a newsletter, so I just noticed them). At this point we have two options: (1) I can try to get the code to a point where it passes the checks next weekend. Judging from the warnings this should be possible with reasonable effort, but I have very limited time on my hands, so there's a risk I won't make it before March 17th. (2) I'd be happy to give either of you co-ownership of the package and let you have a go at a fix. Let me know if you'd like to do that. Cheers (and sorry again for the late reply!), Phil On Tue, Mar 3, 2020 at 4:32 PM Kurt Hornik <Kurt.Hornik@r-project.org<mailto:Kurt.Hornik@r-project.org>> wrote: Dear maintainers, This concerns the CRAN packages GeNetIt amt spatialEco velox maintained by one of you: Jeffrey S. Evans <jeffrey_evans@tnc.org<mailto:jeffrey_evans@tnc.org>>: GeNetIt spatialEco Johannes Signer <jsigner@gwdg.de<mailto:jsigner@gwdg.de>>: amt Philipp Hunziker <hunzikp@gmail.com<mailto:hunzikp@gmail.com>>: velox We have repeatedly asked for an update fixing the check problems shown on <https://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_results_velox.html<https://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_results_velox.html>> with no reply from the maintainer thus far. Thus, package velox is now scheduled for archival on 2020-03-17, and archiving this will necessitate also archiving its strong reverse dependencies. Please negotiate the necessary actions. Best -k -- Philipp Hunziker From: Jean-Romain <notifications@github.com> Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2020 11:11 AM To: hunzikp/velox <velox@noreply.github.com> Cc: Jeffrey Evans <jeffrey_evans@TNC.ORG>; Mention <mention@noreply.github.com> Subject: Re: [hunzikp/velox] CRAN archive notification (#43) We cannot submit a fix on CRAN for the maintainer. He could agree for transferring the role of maintainer to somebody else. But for that we need to get in touch with the current maintainer. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#43 (comment)>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ACLKH74NCZLZV2FHID6NMYTRJOEA7ANCNFSM4LAOMD2Q>.

[Jean-Romain]

I can fix it. Then he will only need to accept the PR resubmit the package.

[cjcarlson]

Hey @Jean-Romain did you happen to ever take this over? We have a bunch of scripts that are based on velox and I'm debating the effort to migrate them over versus just waiting a few weeks

[Jean-Romain]

I waiting for a validation from the author (or somebody in contact with him). I won't spent time on that if my PR won't be accepted because the author no longer check github and won't release the fix.

[mikoontz]

@cjcarlson: Can you install from GitHub and have it work, or are the failing CRAN checks relevant for your OS? (remotes::install_github("hunzikp/velox@master")) Is this COVID work and would you deem it critical? In which case I'll ask on your behalf whether @Jean-Romain might reconsider patching the package so it can at least be installed via his GitHub repository, but only if he has the bandwidth for it. Colin, please kibosh this request if I'm off base with it.

[Jean-Romain]

The problem is not a serious issue. It is a C++ compiler warning to protect against not fully explicit way to copy the memory. It does not affect the package itself. The code should be written differently but the code does what it is expected to do. So the package is still workable but the CRAN takes very seriously every warnings.

[cjcarlson]

Good news is (thank god) this isn't for COVID, no.

I've tried to install_github with devtools before and it's been failing. Hadn't thought to try using remotes, and sure enough, it looks like it works for now. Let me double-check whether it works across machines just as a precaution! But that was a good shout, thanks @mikoontz

[jeffreyevans]

I should point out that devtools has been split out into a few packages, remotes being one of them. The `install_github` in devtools is actually coming from remotes (where the function now lives). I have found that sometimes the function forwarding fails when called from devtools so, a good practice is the call the function directly from remotes. Best, Jeff Jeffrey S. Evans, Ph.D., | Senior Landscape Ecologist & Biometrician The Nature Conservancy | Protected Lands Science Visiting Professor | University of Wyoming | Zoology & Physology Laramie, WY | jeffrey_evans@tnc.org<mailto:jeffrey_evans@tnc.org> | (970) 672-6766<tel:(970)%20672-6766> From: Colin J. Carlson <notifications@github.com> Sent: Saturday, April 4, 2020 12:29 PM To: hunzikp/velox <velox@noreply.github.com> Cc: Jeffrey Evans <jeffrey_evans@TNC.ORG>; Mention <mention@noreply.github.com> Subject: Re: [hunzikp/velox] CRAN archive notification (#43) Good news is (thank god) this isn't for COVID, no. I've tried to install_github with devtools before and it's been failing. Hadn't thought to try using remotes, and sure enough, it looks like it works for now. Let me double-check whether it works across machines just as a precaution! But that was a good shout, thanks @mikoontz<https://github.com/mikoontz> — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#43 (comment)>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ACLKH7ZQOITB5XHWWWQA3MDRK54AHANCNFSM4LAOMD2Q>.