[ARROW-15299] [R] investigate {remotes} dependencies "soft" vs TRUE

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Information Provided
• Fix Version/s: 8.0.0
• Component/s: R
• External issue URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/30789
• Assignee: Dragoș Moldovan-Grünfeld
• Reporter: Dragoș Moldovan-Grünfeld
• Created: 11/Jan/22 11:11
• Updated: 11/Jan/23 11:36
• Resolved: 23/Feb/22 13:29

Description

Although the remotes::install_deps() docs state dependencies == TRUE is equivalent to dependencies == "soft", I suspect "soft" is a bit more recursive than TRUE, resulting in the installation of many more packages.

TRUE is shorthand for "Depends", "Imports", "LinkingTo" and "Suggests". NA is shorthand for "Depends", "Imports" and "LinkingTo" and is the default. FALSE is shorthand for no dependencies (i.e. just check this package, not its dependencies).

The value "soft" means the same as TRUE, "hard" means the same as NA.

I noticed, when using dependencies = "soft" that my session was being clogged up by package installations lasting well over 40 minutes.

I would be good to time box this to a couple of hours.

The direction in which I would go would be to understand if there is any difference in the size of the dependency trees + come up with a minimal reproducible example.

Edit (12 January, 2021): the output could be a table comparing

remotes::install_deps(dependencies = TRUE)
remotes::install_deps(dependencies = "hard")
remotes::install_deps(dependencies = c("hard", "Config..."))
remotes::install_deps(dependencies = "soft")
remotes::install_deps(dependencies = c("soft", "Config..."))

Issue Links

• is related to: ARROW-12743 [R] Add additional DESCRIPTION fields for dev dependencies and update docs accordingly
• relates to: ARROW-12743 [R] Add additional DESCRIPTION fields for dev dependencies and update docs accordingly