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I would like to hear how folks do their reverse dependency checks on Windows these days.

When using the "official", yet experimental function tools::check_packages_in_dir() as suggested by CRAN Repository Policy [1] on Windows, reverse dependencies are checked based on their sources, i.e., everything is to be compiled. This can take ages even for relatively few dependencies/suggested packages. Next to that, it is not very convenient as I hit a lot of missing packages in the process so that the tests error, I need to install the missing packages and start over again...

I used to use devtools::revdep_check which was convenient as it used the Windows binaries for checks so no time is spend for compilation and it offered a nice handling in general. However, it was decided with version 2.0 that this functionality shall not live inside devtools anymore but shall be moved to a dedicated package (revdepcheck, to be used in devtools via intermediating package use_this) which is not available on CRAN yet and which does not build in its development repository. This effectively defunct status in devtools seems to endure for over a year now (with some new activities in revdepcheck development only recently).

(Edit: I should also mention that using a version of devtools prior to removal of the reverse dependency check function seems to give arbitrary errors, so that does not seem to be an option either.)

I did not find any other approaches that seem viable. So I wonder, how to check reverse dependencies duely and efficiently on a Windows-based machine these days?

[1] https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/policies.html

Helix123
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  • What about https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/packrat/index.html? – Christoph Apr 29 '20 at 19:42
  • "Packrat has been soft-deprecated and is now superceded by [package] renv." -> "The renv package helps you create reproducible environments for your R projects." I do not think this includes dependency checking, do you know more? – Helix123 Apr 29 '20 at 19:46
  • I didn't know that. You should check renv and reference it in your question. – Christoph Apr 29 '20 at 19:52
  • As package renv and devtools/revdepcheck come from the same hood (RStudio folks), I do not believe it is worthwile to spend time on investigating whether renv provides functionality that is meant to be supplied by revdepcheck. – Helix123 Apr 29 '20 at 20:25
  • CRAN has usethis version 1.6.0 in place now. as per the documentation, I think this might help you: usethis::use_revdep(). https://usethis.r-lib.org/reference/index.html – rj-nirbhay May 05 '20 at 08:31
  • CRAN has `usethis` version 1.6.1. And result of running `usethis::use_revdep()` is "Run checks with `revdepcheck::revdep_check(num_workers = 4)`", but package `revdepcheck` has still not been published on CRAN and the documentation pretents as if it is available. – Helix123 May 05 '20 at 21:31
  • related: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46365317/what-is-the-most-user-friendly-way-to-test-the-reverse-dependencies-for-a-packag – Helix123 May 19 '20 at 20:09

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