R-1.2.3: a small suggestion (PR#961)

I had asked about multiple version (and also platform) support several
times during the past few years, and had always been told that this was
not necessary.  So why does this keep coming up?

One can add a version layer, but one has to do this right.  Patterning
after the Emacs model is wrong.  Binary incompatabilities were pointed
out, so

	PREFIX/lib/R/VERSION
	PREFIX/lib/R/site

is not good enough.  Emacs has added [the equivalent of]

	PREFIX/lib/R/site/VERSION

but that requires external control of version dependency at install
time.  We actually have the required info through the DESCRIPTION db,
hence could take care of this.

Are you sure we have the right info? We know if a package is
source-incompatible with old versions of R but we may not know if it is
binary-incompatible with new versions.  I was surprised to find that
survival seems to be binary-incompatible between 1.2.3 and 1.3.0 -- at
least, several bugs went away when I recompiled with pre1.3.0

	-thomas

Thomas Lumley			Asst. Professor, Biostatistics
tlumley@u.washington.edu	University of Washington, Seattle

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
r-devel mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html
Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe"
(in the "body", not the subject !)  To: r-devel-request@stat.math.ethz.ch
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._