Choroplethr is Scheduled to be Archived from CRAN

I was just notified by CRAN that choroplethr is scheduled to be archived on February 12. The reason is that choroplethr depends on the acs package, and the acs package is being archived. Apparently when a package is archived from CRAN, all packages which use it are also archived.

I am not exactly sure what this means (I have never had a package archived before). But I assume it means that if you type install.packages("choroplethr") after February 12 then it will no longer install choroplethr. I see this as having the following consequences:

1. Using the methodology described here it looks like choroplethr was downloaded 1,523 times last month from the RStudio CRAN mirror. So this change will likely impact a non-trivial number of people.
2. The Census Bureau still hosts a course on how to use choroplethr (link). After the archive it will need to be updated with new installation instructions.

Alternatives to Archival

In some sense I am OK with choroplethr being archived: it was first published in 2014 and hasn’t had a substantial update in years. And my current projects use Python, not R. But because it is still in use, I thought to mention two paths I see to keeping choroplethr on CRAN:

1. Fix the issues in the acs package that are leading to its archival.
2. Remove the dependency that choroplethr has on acs.

Fix the issues in acs

According to this page, it appears that acs is being archived because R CMD Check is complaining about two bash scripts (cleanup and configure) in its home directory. Given that the acs package was last updated in 2018, I am not sure why CRAN is only complaining now.

I downloaded the package source and these files appear to deal with managing the Census API key. Simply deleting these files (or moving them to a subdirectory) might make R CMD Check happy. But doing this might also introduce a bug.

I have spoken with the acs package maintainer. He would prefer to archive the package rather than fix this issue himself. However, he appears open to handing the package over to someone else. If this interests you, please contact him directly. You can get his contact information from the acs package page (link).

Remove the dependency choroplethr has on acs

Choroplethr does not need to depend on the acs package. Everything that the acs package does the tidycensus package can do as well. Choroplethr started by using acs exclusively (tidycensus did not exist back then). But it was also an early adopter of tidycensus and uses it for some features. The path forward here is:

1. Drop the dependency choroplethr has on the acs package.
2. Run R CMD Check. It will emit a lot of errors. Fix them one by one.
3. When all those bugs are fixed, do additional testing by hand.
4. Resubmit the package to CRAN.

I estimate that I could do this with one or two weeks of part-time work. That being said, I cannot afford to take on such a large volunteer project right now. This leaves two ways to accomplish this option:

1. Someone else takes on the role of choroplethr maintainer and does this work themselves.
2. Someone pays me to do this work.

Please contact me if either option interests you.

Conclusion

Choroplethr is scheduled to be archived from CRAN on February 12. This is because the acs package, which Choroplethr uses, is set to be archived on February 12.

Choroplethr was first published 11 years ago and has not received a substantial update in several years. Despite this, it appears to still be used by a significant number of people.

There are options to keep Choroplethr on CRAN. But it is not clear if there is enough interest to implement them.

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