Extending the `tiff` package without support from the author

Package development
1

I am interested in modifying and extending the tiff package for several reasons:

  • Update to more recent libtiff (currently it uses 4.0.2 which is )
  • Add support for reading TIFF directories without loading the accompanying images
  • Add support for reading tiled TIFF images

I have attempted to contact the author (Simon Urbanek) via github ticket, via his published email, and via what appears to be a work email. I haven't received any reply.

What is the best way to proceed? So far I have forked the repo and implemented the first two items listed above. I will eventually want to use the modified library as a dependency in another package. Should I ask users to install from github? Rename the package and distribute that?

Any advice and suggestions appreciated. Thanks!
Kent

3 Likes
2

The package looks kind of abandoned, huh? You could try creating a Pull Request to merge your changes in, but if the author's not watching their GitHub account, maybe you should update the instructions on your forked version to tell users to install with devtools. And optionally rename (though I tend toward simply referring to your own version using a GitHub user/repo syntax outside of R to make it clear where it's coming from).

Congrats on improving the package, though! :tada:

3

Thanks, for now just distributing via GitHub or binary installer is probably the simplest thing to do.

1 Like