Some R packages change 'future.*' options permanently

[HenrikBengtsson]

Issue

Several CRAN packages changes Futureverse R options, e.g. future.globals.maxSize and future.rng.onMisuse. This may happen when one of their functions are called, or when the package is attached. Not pointing fingers at any particular package, here are a few examples illustrating the problem:

$ R --vanilla --quiet
> getOption("future.globals.maxSize")
NULL

> library(future)
> getOption("future.globals.maxSize")
NULL

> library(parseRPDR)
...

> getOption("future.globals.maxSize")
[1] 107374182400

The problem with doing this is that it overrides whatever settings the R user has decided to use. Also, changing options like future.rng.onMisuse to "ignore" removes the RNG protection in other places.

Tasks

• Improve documentation to clarify that this is a no-no.
• Give examples how to temporarily set in function.
• Investigate if this can be protected against automatically.
• Investigate if this can be detected in revdep checks.
• Manually scan CRAN for cases and report to package maintainers, e.g.
  • future.globals.maxSize: https://github.com/search?q=org%3Acran%20future.globals.maxSize+language%3Ar&type=code
  • future.rng.onMisuse: https://github.com/search?q=org%3Acran+future.rng.onMisuse+language%3Ar&type=code
  • I've contacted all "affected" CRAN package maintainers (by GitHub or email) [2024-02-29]