[Rd] NOTE: unstated dependencies in examples

Nick Sabbe nick.sabbe at ugent.be
Fri Oct 14 20:53:15 CEST 2011


> 
> So other people from the administration tell you which software to use
> for teaching? And what happens if they tell you only Excel is
> available?
> ... weird ...
> 

On the contrary, I should say: very common. We have hardly any control over
what is installed on the application servers at our university (let alone
how well it is installed).

> You can still use the old version there, if the new version depends on
> R
>  >= 2.14.0. The old version will stay in the binary repositories for
> old
> versions of R and in the package archives of the source repository as
> well. I think Duncan explained that already.

Then what about new features that don't depend on parallel? Maintenance hell
is born, just because you effectively force somebody to fork (True, the R
builders are not the ones forcing people to stay on some "old" version, yet
this scenario is not that strange that it should be ditched without regard).

> 
> 
> > A second point is that the package would not *depend* or anything on
> R>=
> > 2.14.0.
> 
> But it depends on it: it won't pass the checks for R < 2.14.0.

Somewhat silly if it only depends on it because of the check, no?


Nick Sabbe
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