From maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch  Wed Jul 21 17:18:38 2004
From: maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch (Martin Maechler)
Date: Wed Jul 21 17:18:40 2004
Subject: [Rd] RE: [Rcom-l] rcom 0.97 available for download
In-Reply-To: <20040721144924.GA23942@sonny.eddelbuettel.com>
References: <3A822319EB35174CA3714066D590DCD504AF80BD@usrymx25.merck.com>
	<20040721141846.GA23293@sonny.eddelbuettel.com>
	<40FE806E.8070809@statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
	<20040721144924.GA23942@sonny.eddelbuettel.com>
Message-ID: <16638.35150.431900.884105@gargle.gargle.HOWL>

>>>>> "Dirk" == Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org>
>>>>>     on Wed, 21 Jul 2004 09:49:24 -0500 writes:

    Dirk> On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 04:40:46PM +0200, Uwe Ligges wrote:
    >> Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
    >> 
    >> >On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 09:39:29AM -0400, Liaw, Andy wrote:
    >> >
    >> >>Would it make sense to have platform specific packages in a separate area 
    >> >>on
    >> >>CRAN?  I don't know of anything other than Windows that understand COM.
    >> 
    >> The question is: What exactly is platform-specific?

    Dirk> Platform-specific means what it says -- works only on
    Dirk> a given platform (or maybe a few).  Or are trying to
    Dirk> pull a Clinton here: "it depends was your meaning of
    Dirk> platform is" ? :)

    >> >Yup, and 'core' CRAN contains at least one Windows-only
    >> >package: rbugs [ as I found when working on a script to
    >> >automagically build Debian packages from CPAN packages,
    >> >the script is a modified version of Albrecht's script ]
    >> 
    >> The author told me that rbugs is intended to work with WinBUGS under 
    >> wine on a linux system  (whereas I'm pretty sure R2WinBUGS is capable - 

    Dirk> Think about it, what does 'run under wine' mean?  Do
    Dirk> you get it: it ain't no native package when it needs
    Dirk> an emulator.

    Dirk> Saying it runs under Linux using wine is like claiming
    Dirk> your car just turned into a boat. While it will float
    Dirk> once driven into the river, I presume it won't float
    Dirk> for very long ...

    >> Where's the point not to have just this one source repository related to 
    >> platform dependency?

    Dirk> Precisely. Let's have one source repo but _let us
    Dirk> label any and all binary restrictions_ more clearly so
    Dirk> that I for one can skip over stuff that may build for
    Dirk> you [ Windoze ] but won't for me [ Linux, preferable
    Dirk> on all all ten to twelve hardware platforms supported
    Dirk> by Debian for packages that get uploaded ].

    Dirk> Does that make sense? Would it improve over what we currently have?

Yes (2x).

I'd prefer to keep those packages in one place and rather mark
them than to move them to specific directories.

E.g., Dirk's proposal will also work when a package only works,
in IBM AIX and in Windows.

Martin


[Rd] RE: [Rcom-l] rcom 0.97 available for download
Martin Maechler