CRAN packages with -Wpointer-sign warnings External

[mbjones]

Email from CRAN seems to ask us to fix the warnings in the underlying C package:

Seen with both gcc and clang. That is
C50 Cubist RMVL RecordLinkage Rttf2pt1 RxODE blockTools bnstruct not
randaes redland
Please correct before 2022-01-23 to safely retain your package on CRAN.

--
Brian D. Ripley, [email protected]
Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford

@gothub let's discuss please in terms of what this would take.

[gothub]

The warnings that were reported by CRAN are the same ones that have been with the package for the last few years.

They result from the SWIG generated redland.c file, which contains an incorrect function declaration, for example:

  librdf_digest_update(arg1,(char const *)arg2,arg3);

instead of

  librdf_digest_update(arg1,(unsigned char const *)arg2,arg3);

For a quick fix that will allow a CRAN resubmission before 20220123, I have manually updated redland.c so that the package builds cleanly, i.e. CMD INSTALL --no-multiarch --with-keep.source redland produces no warnings.

With these changes to redland.c, devtools:check() and devtools:test() pass without errors or warnings.

I'll file an issue with https://github.com/swig/swig/issues after creating a simple test file that they can use for debugging.

Note that this compile problem occurs with the most recent SWIG version (SWIG 4.0.2, 2020/06/08), with the unmodified redlands.c file.

I'll also test package build/install on other platforms via rhub and post the results here.

[gothub]

rhub builds:

• Fedora Linux, R-devel, clang, gfortran: OK
• Fedora Linux, R-devel, GCC: OK
• Debian Linux, R-release, GCC: OK
• Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, R-release, 32/64 bit: NOTE
  installed size is 5.9Mb
  sub-directories of 1Mb or more:
  libs 5.0Mb

[cboettig]

👏 heroic work, Peter!

[gothub]

@mbjones the updated redlands.c file is on the feature-R-compile-errors-#96 branch. Should this be merged now and a new release submitted with just that change?

[mbjones]

I didn't test it, but if all the tests are passing, then yeah, let's get it in a release. I did ask about whether you wanted to fold that longstanding PR in as well, but that requires a doc rebuild. Your call there. Why don't you merge your branch into develop and we'll prep the release there as usual.

[gothub]

Fixed in commit 2018aeb

Updated ./src/redland.c directly to fix the compile errors.