What to do after I've found and fixed some bugs in CRAN package and author is not responding?

Question

I'm not new to R but I'm new to finding errors in CRAN packages which I wish to correct. In my case, I like to upload packages under development on github; then if errors are found people can generate pull requests so they're fixed. Not not everyone chooses to go down this route though.

My question relates to the above - if I find a (substantial) error in a widely used CRAN package (which I need to import in my own package), and I have fixed the errors, what are the steps to take? In particular if

1. the CRAN package does not have a project page (github etc.) and
2. the author is not replying to e-mails

Currently my solution is to upload a copy of the 'corrected' package on my github page and instruct people to install that version before using my own. This is cumbersome and not an elegant solution. Are there better alternatives to this?

Mitten

I can't see what else you'd do. You could bump the version number of your bug-fixed version, then make your own package depend on that version. – Medford

If the maintainer is not replying to the email(maybe he is just busy for the moment) , you can ask a question showing the bug , and answer your own question with your github fix version. People will find easily your patch. – Chaffin

If it's not too much work, write your own version of the functions being used and add them to your package. The fewer dependencies the better... – Careworn

Everything on CRAN is open source so you can fork it. Now, you should not run off and immediately fork things but a few emails to the maintainer, maybe with CCs to CRAN , show your good intentions and proper process. – Mesopause

These are all good and valid comments, many thanks. For the sake of proper process I will start off with @DirkEddelbuettel's suggestion and, if all else fails, will go with that of flodel. In general I think it's better to incorporate code than make a "yet another package" as agstudy and Ben suggested but appreciate that that is just a case of preference. Thanks again. – Mitten

Note that you should contact the maintainer and not the author - they may not be the same person, and the maintainer has to supply an email address to get on CRAN. Also, packageDescription("foo") may have a BugReports: field for the preferred bug reporting method. – Platinic

Answer 1

This the good and the bad of R ... sometimes package are forsaken! Get the source code and create your own pacakge. If it is useful for you it will be useful for others!

there a lot of documentations on how to create packages: http://www.r-bloggers.com/create-an-r-package-in-under-6-minutes/

Ouster