if(--as-cran)?

| Hi, see thread "[Rd] Proposal: Mechanism for controlling the amount of
| testing 'R CMD check' performs" on April 8, 2012:
|
|   https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2012-April/063809.html

Good proposal, somehow I missed that at the time.  Something like this ought
be to implemented in R proper.

In Rcpp, I am now using a similar environment-variable-based approach, and it
doesn't scale particularly well if every (large) package does its own thing.

Is there any approach that's going to be particularly better than
scaling out CRAN's build servers?  As a particularly profuse package
author, I'd be happy to pay for the computing time that it takes to
run a full set of tests on my package (and this seems feasible in the
era of on-demand cloud computing).

Hadley

Jim Ramsay suggested we have CRAN generate a pro-forma invoice 
when a package is first submitted to CRAN and on each anniversary 
thereafter that would be like page charges for journals:  If you work 
for an organization that knows how to pay invoices, you submit the 
invoice to that system.  Ramsay said he has grant money and would be 
happy to pay a reasonable fee, but he needs an invoice.  If you aren't 
in such an organization, you are free to plead poverty and pay anything 
or nothing.  I think we should do the same for R-Forge.


       I think the fee should be set high enough that the money 
generated would be enough to pay for more hardware AND for someone to 
maintain the system.  The entirety of humanity will benefit if Ripley, 
Hornik, Ligges, Theussl, Zeileis and others spend more time developing 
better statistical algorithms and less struggling with computer hardware 
and operating systems just to keep CRAN and R-Forge functioning.  These 
folks and others have done a great job in bringing R to where it is 
today.  There are now over 4,000 packages on CRAN.  If 25% of those pay, 
say, 200 (Euros or dollars) per year, for example, that should be enough 
to hire a competent sys admin or two with an adequate hardware budget to 
keep it all running, I think.


       Thanks, Hadley.
       Spencer

Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
President and Chief Technology Officer
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