From gavin.simpson at ucl.ac.uk  Tue Jun 15 14:31:49 2010
From: gavin.simpson at ucl.ac.uk (Gavin Simpson)
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:31:49 +0100
Subject: [Rd] [R] Prime Numbers Pkgs - Schoolmath is broken
In-Reply-To: <4C176A03.2050705@gmail.com>
References: <663785.75465.qm@web34503.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<1276529113.19297.61.camel@localhost>  <4C176A03.2050705@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <1276605109.12203.31.camel@localhost>

On Tue, 2010-06-15 at 13:54 +0200, Peter Dalgaard wrote:
> Gavin Simpson wrote:
> > On Mon, 2010-06-14 at 07:16 -0700, Red Roo wrote:
> ....
> >> primes() and primlist are broken in Schoolmath pkg on CRAN.
> >> My analysis can be found here http://j.mp/9BNI9q
> >> Not sure what the procedure is for getting things fixed, so I've
> >> cross-posted to r-dev as well.
> > 
> > Neither place is correct. This has *nothing* to do with R. Address bug
> > reports directly to the package maintainer, details of which can be
> > found here:
> > 
> > http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/schoolmath/index.html
> > 
> > which is what is requested in the posting guide...
> 
> Hmm, well... yes, but:
> 
> It could be argued that we are a little too closed to discussing items
> outside of base R. There is something to be said for allowing people to
> point out to us that we do have a package on CRAN that claims that 133
> is a prime! Of course it might be considered more polite first to tell
> the package maintainder that he has egg on his face...
> 
> -pd

Hi Peter,

I agree with what you say; on the main R-Help list people are free to
answer/ignore questions on contributed packages as they wish so there
shouldn't be discouragement of such communications.

There was an interesting discussion on R-Help or R-Devel (I forget
which) recently where a question was asked about when it was appropriate
to send a public email to R-Help/R-Devel notifying the community of
problems with a package on CRAN that had gone unacknowledged despite the
OP having contacted the package maintainers. That post solicited several
interesting and consider replies, and I too would like to be made aware
if a package was providing incorrect/erroneous results.

As you say, it is good form to give the maintainer an opportunity to fix
the problem and/or respond. However, the tone of Neil Gunther's analysis
left a sour taste in the mouth and didn't indicate the maintainer had
been contacted to correct the problems.

G
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[Rd] [R] Prime Numbers Pkgs - Schoolmath is broken
Gavin Simpson