Skip to content

Different package versions on CRAN?

3 messages · Philippe GROSJEAN, Brian Ripley, Uwe Ligges

#
Hello,

I am making changes to some of my packages that are exposed in CRAN. 
Some changes make them incompatible with previous R versions [and I use 
Depends: R (>= 2.1.0)]. I suspect that, as soon as I will upload this 
new version to CRAN, it will replace the old one _everywhere_? However, 
the previous version of these packages remains perfectly usable with R 
1.9.X or 2.0.X. So, will this break the binaries in 
/windows/contrib/1.9|2.0, or will the latest valid binaries of my 
packages remain there, not updated? To put it another way, for a package 
Mypack with version 1.0-1 compatible with all R versions, when I upload 
Mypack version 2.0-0 compatible only with R 2.1.0, what will be the 
result on CRAN regarding Windows binaires?
1?) /windows/contrib/2.1/Mypack_2.0-0.zip
     /windows/contrib/2.0/Mypack_1.0-1.zip  # Not updated
     /windows/contrib/1.9/....              # Idem for all other subdirs

or

2?) /windows/contrib/2.1/Mypack_2.0-0.zip
     ??? error ??? because CRAN tries to update the package for other 
subdirectories and encounters Depends: R (>= 2.1.0) ???

Thanks,

Philippe

..............................................<?}))><........
  ) ) ) ) )
( ( ( ( (    Prof. Philippe Grosjean
  ) ) ) ) )
( ( ( ( (    Numerical Ecology of Aquatic Systems
  ) ) ) ) )   Mons-Hainaut University, Pentagone (3D08)
( ( ( ( (    Academie Universitaire Wallonie-Bruxelles
  ) ) ) ) )   8, av du Champ de Mars, 7000 Mons, Belgium
( ( ( ( (
  ) ) ) ) )   phone: + 32.65.37.34.97, fax: + 32.65.37.30.54
( ( ( ( (    email: Philippe.Grosjean@umh.ac.be
  ) ) ) ) )
( ( ( ( (    web:   http://www.umh.ac.be/~econum
  ) ) ) ) )          http://www.sciviews.org
( ( ( ( (
..............................................................
#
On Sun, 8 May 2005, Philippe Grosjean wrote:

            
No.  It would not be offered as an update to systems running R < 2.1.0.
We do not update binary versions for obselete versions of R.  Just look at 
the dates on the directories: 2.0 was last updated on April 19.  And even 
if we did (the 1.9 directory was AFAIR updated for a bit after 2.0.0 came 
out) the version depending on R >= 2.1.0 would not build and so the last 
good version would be left.
#
Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

            
Yes, you are perfectly right.
There is also documentation that is even more specific in 
CRAN/bin/windows/contrib/1.9/ReadMe which tells us:

***********************************************************
This collection is for rw1090/1 only. It is no longer being
updated: please update to rw2001. Last update: 15.12.2004.
***********************************************************


I planned to update R-2.0.x also for a while. In fact, too many packages 
had versions out that depended on R>=2.1.0 very quickly (even if not 
mentioned in the DESCRIPTION file), and it's a whole mess to let the 
autobuilder decide which package to update, which not, and which to mark 
to be erroneous. So I decided not to update anything in order not to 
disarrange the whole repository.
Yes, and accordingly CRAN/bin/windows/contrib/ReadMe tells us:

   ./1.9   Binaries for R-1.9.x - no longer updated
   ./2.0   Binaries for R-2.0.x - no longer updated
   ./2.1   Binaries for R-2.1.x - release (AKA r-release)


Uwe