Uploading multiple interdependent packages to CRAN

Question

I am preparing three R packages to soon upload to CRAN which are interdependent. Specifically, package A is already on CRAN and to be updated, package B is independent and package C depends on both the latest versions of A and B.

I could do this without having problems in checks by first uploading A and C and uploading B a few days later. But, I would like to immediately put crossreferences in the help pages and add all packages to each other's suggest list. Additionally, since I will develop all three further, I would like to be able to update them in the future at the same time.

So, the question here is, is it possible to upload multiple interdependent packages to CRAN at the same time? How could I do that?

Answer 1

Been there done that this week (with a Depends: on a version of xts that arrived yesterday). And we do that within Rcpp* a lot too.

So just use versioned Depends:

• update A to provide version 42
• upload B to provide its initial version 0.0.7
• upload C with Depends: A (>= 42), B (>= 0.0.7)
• now update A version 42.1 with Suggests: for B and C

The Fine Manual is pretty clear about it, and carried all these semantics over from Debian where they were refined since the mid-1990s.