Loading when the package name is invalid

I'm very interested in using DESCRIPTION files for non-package projects. One of my favorite benefits is being able to load_all(). Unfortunately, if the name of the project is not a valid R package name, load_all() errors. IMO, it shouldn't be load_all()'s job to check the name, but having read the source code, I see it's a bit more complicated than that:

pkgload/R/load.r

Lines 123 to 131 in 21675ec

    
           # Check description file is ok 
        
           check <- ("tools" %:::% ".check_package_description")( 
        
             package_file("DESCRIPTION", path = path)) 
        
           if (length(check) > 0) { 
        
             msg <- utils::capture.output(("tools" %:::% "print.check_package_description")(check)) 
        
             cli::cli_alert_danger("Invalid DESCRIPTION") 
        
             cli::cli_code(msg) 
        
           }

As it's actually tools running a more complete check on the DESCRIPTION file.

Ignoring the fact that I could get around this by sanitizing the name in the DESCRIPTION file, is there another approach that could be used here to facilitate better use of loading in non-package projects? E.g. run a more custom check on the DESCRIPTION file with desc or capture and ignore (or just warn) when the problem is not a big deal (like the name)?

Edit: Actually, now that I'm looking at tools:::.check_package_description(), this seems like stuff that would all be caught in R CMD check anyway. Does something this complete need to be run at the loading stage?

I think we can remove it. While it may catch some uses for load_all() in the wrong directory the tools code doesn't actually throw an error in many cases.

Possibly we could just call rprojroot::find_package_root_file() to find the package root, erroring otherwise.

All it does is check there is a description starting with ^Package:

That sounds perfect to me. That is the same way that usethis:::is_package() defines a package, so IMO rprojroot::find_package_root_file() is ideal for consistency

Happy to PR if you want

Sure a PR would be great

	# Check description file is ok
	check <- ("tools" %:::% ".check_package_description")(
	package_file("DESCRIPTION", path = path))

	if (length(check) > 0) {
	msg <- utils::capture.output(("tools" %:::% "print.check_package_description")(check))
	cli::cli_alert_danger("Invalid DESCRIPTION")
	cli::cli_code(msg)
	}