From edd at debian.org  Mon May  5 14:46:02 2008
From: edd at debian.org (Dirk Eddelbuettel)
Date: Mon, 5 May 2008 07:46:02 -0500
Subject: [Rd] OS_type
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.1.10.0805051128220.6217@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>
References: <alpine.LFD.1.10.0805051128220.6217@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <20080505124602.GA29806@eddelbuettel.com>

On Mon, May 05, 2008 at 11:56:47AM +0100, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> We've now implemented an OS_type field in a package's DESCRIPTION file,  
> which if set has to match .Platform$OS.type (possible values "unix" and  
> "windows").  CRAN has set up some overrides and added this field to  
> packages known to be Unix-only or Windows-only, but authors should do so  
> for themselves in future.
>
> Unsuitable packages will not be offered by available.packages(), will not 
> be installed by R CMD INSTALL, and R CMD check will select --no-install.
>
> This happens in R-devel and R-patched, and is intended to simplify  
> automated installation and checking.

Good idea.  

Just yesterday, someone was just wondering on the r-sig-finance list
why his Linux box was bringing in RBloomberg and thusly RDCOMClient
when retrieving the default task view set for Finance.  As maintainer
of the task view, I had no good answer other than the default of
howling at Achim and calling it a ctv feature.  

But yes, it really was a design issue and this should fix it. So thanks.

Dirk

-- 
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.



[Rd] OS_type
Dirk Eddelbuettel