Package cli use of "Suggests" rather than "Imports" seems odd #810

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1. msberends commented on Apr 2, 2026

   

   msberends

   on Apr 2, 2026

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   Yea, had this too, but I would only add rlang to Imports, not any of the others packages to keep the dependencies as few as possible. A solution for the other pkgs is to call rlang::check_is_installed() in cli functions you’re using other deps in.
2. gaborcsardi commented on Apr 2, 2026

   

   gaborcsardi

   on Apr 2, 2026

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   What exactly is the issue?
3. msberends commented on Apr 2, 2026

   

   msberends

   on Apr 2, 2026

   Last edited by msberends

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   If you rely on cli, eg:

   #’ @importFrom cli cli_abort
   my_abort <- function() {
     cli_abort(“Something”)
   }

   Then add cli to Imports as devs should, then:

   1. The package will only install cli, not rlang
   2. yet rlang is required for cli_abort
   3. The function my_abort will fail since rlang is not installed

   So it only works if rlang was installed because users also installed tidyverse for example. I’m afraid this is a design flaw in the dependency tree.
4. gaborcsardi commented on Apr 2, 2026

   

   gaborcsardi

   on Apr 2, 2026

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   Right. rlang is an optional dependency of cli, and it is only needed for some features, namely cli_abort() and co. Other packaging systems, e.g. Rust crates, have ways to express this, but unfortunately the R package system does not.

   I cannot currently add rlang as a hard dependency because pak uses cli, but pak does not work with rlang. I can try to document better that you'll also need to import rlang if you use cli_abort().

   Do you see any other way to improve the situation? Maybe cli_abort() could check that the called package depends on rlang, but that could be overkill and/or fragile.
5. msberends commented on Apr 3, 2026

   

   msberends

   on Apr 3, 2026

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   I see.

   Then documenting + checking within cli_inform (and friends) would be best I think. Checks deps of others packages is definitely overkill.

   You could add a simple:

   if (!"rlang" %in% rownames(utils::installed.packages())) {
     stop("This requires the rlang package. Install it using install.packages()")
   }

   Or something like that?