From maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch  Wed Mar  5 09:22:23 2003
From: maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch (Martin Maechler)
Date: Wed Mar  5 09:22:33 2003
Subject: [Rd] CRAN scripts?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0303041316350.15164-100000@bolker.zoo.ufl.edu>
References: <20030304164202.GA26064@sonny.eddelbuettel.com>
	<Pine.LNX.4.44.0303041316350.15164-100000@bolker.zoo.ufl.edu>
Message-ID: <15973.46015.547766.980751@gargle.gargle.HOWL>

>>>>> "Ben" == Ben Bolker <ben@zoo.ufl.edu>
>>>>>     on Tue, 4 Mar 2003 13:19:16 -0500 (EST) writes:

    Ben> OK, then, 

you are aiming at CRAN, thank you.
In spite of the reposTools developments mentioned, I agree with
Dirk that it's best submitting to CRAN -- at least for the time being.
One strong argument for CRAN is that the R Core team "looks"
(via grep etc) at the CRAN sources frequently in deciding about
new features, possible back-compatibility breaking changes etc etc.
Also the CRAN maintainers daily check all CRAN packages against
the curren *development* version(s) of R -- and make sure
CRAN packages continue to run "R CMD check" -- or the package
maintainer is notified about something we consider an ``infelicity'',
(e.g. using non-API C calls into R code; using "internal" R
 functions that might be changed, etc etc).

    Ben> one more concern: I'm trying to decide on an
    Ben> appropriate level of resolution for distributing
    Ben> packages.  At the moment I have "bbmisc", which is a
    Ben> package bundle consisting of about 6 packages of
    Ben> varying size and specificity -- does that seem
    Ben> reasonable?  Or do people prefer more, smaller bits on
    Ben> CRAN?

Many from R core would prefer stand-alone packages instead of
bundles quite a bit. {some have even proposed to drop bundle support.}

If you have one ``base package'' and all the other just needing
that one, I'd put something like  stopifnot(require(mybasepkg)) statements
in the .First.Lib of the other packages and still put them on
CRAN separately.

If you have very good reasons for the bundle, well..


    Ben> On Tue, 4 Mar 2003, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:

    >> On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 11:39:51AM -0500, Ben Bolker wrote:
    >> > do people think that I should bite the bullet and submit my packages to 
    >> > CRAN instead?
    >> 
    >> Yes please.
    >> 
    >> Dirk
    >> 

Regards,
Martin Maechler <maechler@stat.math.ethz.ch>	http://stat.ethz.ch/~maechler/
Seminar fuer Statistik, ETH-Zentrum  LEO C16	Leonhardstr. 27
ETH (Federal Inst. Technology)	8092 Zurich	SWITZERLAND
phone: x-41-1-632-3408		fax: ...-1228			<><


[Rd] CRAN scripts?
Martin Maechler