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[Bioc-devel] Old package versions / Bioc archive of package's *.tar.gz releases?

Henrik et al.,

My switchr package (on CRAN, github at: http://github.com/gmbecker/switchr,
preprint of the paper here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1501.02284
<https://arxiv.org/abs/1501.02284>) can do this.

In fact, installing (cohorts of) old versions of packages is one of it's
primary purposes. Specifically, it can install old source versions of
packages from CRAN, Bioconductor, and general Git and SVN repos you tell it
about.

With the caveat that it's a bad idea in the general case to specify an old
version of one package without specifying versions of its dependencies
(switchr allows you to do this via a manifest, which can be constructed
from sessionInfo output or guessed in the case of a CRAN package), you can
just do
And you will successfully completely break your Bioc installation by
installing IRanges 2.6.0 into it. ;-)

Switchr also gives you tools to more easilly maintain multiple libraries
which contain, for example, different bioc versions in them.

NB: switchr is subject to the caveat Martin pointed out and will fail to
retrieve a buildable version of the package if said buildable version is
not the first commit in SCM bearing that version in its DESCRIPTION file.

Hope that helps.

Best,
~G

On Thu, Oct 5, 2017 at 2:21 PM, Martin Morgan <martin.morgan at roswellpark.org