Best practice for vcr-enabled tests on CRAN

[dpprdan]

I've started using {vcr} for the tests in {opencage}, but I am unsure, what the best practices are regarding running the tests on CRAN (or not).

I have seen that some of the tests that use vcr in other packages skip_on_cran(), but not all, e.g. https://github.com/ropensci/worrms/blob/master/tests/testthat/test-wm_children.R

So it seems to be possible to run these tests on CRAN? Is there anything one has to keep in mind? E.g. where should the cassettes ideally go (for {opencage} I stored them in tests/vcr_cassettes)?

[dpprdan]

I guess one (obvious?) thing to keep in mind would be to create the cassettes by running e.g. devtools::test().

[sckott]

Yes, it is possible to run tests on CRAN that use cassettes on disk. I think at first when vcr was just on CRAN I was skipping tests that used vcr until I was sure it worked on CRAN checks, but it should be fine now to run tests that use vcr on CRAN

I don't know the scope of what's allowed for running tests on CRAN - but it has worked to have them in tests/ somewhere. I've used tests/vcr_cassettes and tests/fixtures/vcr_cassettes

One thing to note is that if you have your cassettes in .gitignore then your cassetttes won't be pushed up to github and tests wouldn't have access to them in remote locations. I think Adam Sparks had done this.

wrt using devtools::test() first: i'll play around with that and have a look - but I'd guess that yes, one would need to run that first if check() uses a tempdir

[dpprdan]

Thanks! We're all set then, it seems. 🎉

One thing to note is that if you have your cassettes in .gitignore then your cassetttes won't be pushed up to github and tests wouldn't have access to them in remote locations.

The same applies to .Rbuildignore, I suppose.

Do you want to add "vcr-enabled tests on CRAN" to the docs/README/HTTP-testing-book?

[sckott]

right, same-ish for .Rbuildignore

Do you want to add "vcr-enabled tests on CRAN" to the docs/README/HTTP-testing-book?

sure, what exactly are you thinking? e.g., how can this section https://github.com/ropensci/vcr#vcr-for-tests be improved

[sckott]

see new section https://ropenscilabs.github.io/http-testing-book/vcr-intro.html#vcr-enabled-testing in the book