[Rd] R 1.8.0 alpha

[Peter Dalgaard BSA]

The countdown to R version 1.8.0 has begun. As a novelty, we now
make preliminary source tarballs available somewhat earlier in the
process. They will be found in

http://cran.us.r-project.org/src/base 

with names of the form  R-1.8.0alpha_2003-09-10.tar.gz 

The first one was created a moment ago; subsequent ones will be
created by a cron job that runs at 05:00 local (Wisconsin) time.

There are still a couple of problems with these versions, but we
expect that there should be no major changes between now and release
time. 

If you have "esoteric" platforms, it is particularly important that
you give us feedback about build issues as soon as you can. Much
better to fix problems before the release than to have to patch things
up immediately after release.

Daily snapshots are available as usual, but even if you check these,
it would be helpful if you could try building from the tarballs since
some potential packaging errors can only be caught that way.

-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)             FAX: (+45) 35327907