From wdunlap at tibco.com  Fri Mar 21 02:45:59 2014
From: wdunlap at tibco.com (William Dunlap)
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 01:45:59 +0000
Subject: [Rd] [RFC] A case for freezing CRAN
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> In particular, updating a package with many reverse dependencies is a
> frustrating process, for everybody. As a maintainer with ~150 reverse
> dependencies, I think not twice, but ten times if I really want to publish
> a new version on CRAN.

It might be easier if more of those packages came with good test suites.

Bill Dunlap
TIBCO Software
wdunlap tibco.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-devel-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-devel-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf
> Of G?bor Cs?rdi
> Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2014 6:24 PM
> To: r-devel
> Subject: Re: [Rd] [RFC] A case for freezing CRAN
> 
> Much of the discussion was about reproducibility so far. Let me emphasize
> another point from Jeroen's proposal.
> 
> This is hard to measure of course, but I think I can say that the existence
> and the quality of CRAN and its packages contributed immensely to the
> success of R and the success of people using R. Having one central, well
> controlled and tested package repository is a huge advantage for the users.
> (I know that there are other repositories, but they are either similarly
> well controlled and specialized (BioC), or less used.) It would be great to
> keep it like this.
> 
> I also think that the current CRAN policy is not ideal for further growth.
> In particular, updating a package with many reverse dependencies is a
> frustrating process, for everybody. As a maintainer with ~150 reverse
> dependencies, I think not twice, but ten times if I really want to publish
> a new version on CRAN. I cannot speak for other maintainers of course, but
> I have a feeling that I am not alone.
> 
> Tying CRAN packages to R releases would help, because then I would not have
> to worry about breaking packages in the stable version of CRAN, only in
> CRAN-devel.
> 
> Somebody mentioned that it is good not to do this because then users get
> bug fixes and new features earlier. Well, in my case, the opposite it true.
> As I am not updating, they actually get it (much) later. If it wasn't such
> a hassle, I would definitely update more often, about once a month. Now my
> goal is more like once a year.
> 
> Again, I cannot speak for others, but I believe the current policy does not
> help progress, and is not sustainable in the long run. It penalizes the
> maintainers of "more important" (= many rev. dependencies, that is, which
> probably also means many users) packages, and I fear they will slowly move
> away from CRAN. I don't think this is what anybody in the R community would
> want.
> 
> Best,
> Gabor
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
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[Rd] [RFC] A case for freezing CRAN
William Dunlap