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Programming Tools CTV

9 messages · Gregory R. Warnes, Henrik Bengtsson, Luca Braglia +2 more

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I've had a lot of requests for additions to the reproducible research
task view that fall into a grey area (to me at least).

For example, roxygen2 is a tool that broadly enable reproducibility
but I see it more as a tool for better programming. I'm about to check
in a new version of the task view that includes packrat and
checkpoint, as they seem closer to reproducible research, but also
feel like coding tools.

There are a few other packages that many would find useful for better
coding: devtools, testthat, lintr, codetools, svTools, rbenchmark,
pkgutils, etc.

This might be some overlap with the HPC task view. I would think that
rJava, Rcpp and the like are better suited there but this is arguable.

The last time I proposed something like this, Martin deftly convinced
me to be the maintainer. It is probably better for everyone if we
avoid that on this occasion.

* Does anyone else see the need for this?

* What other packages fit into this bin?

* Would anyone like to volunteer?

Thanks,

Max
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I second the motion for a Programming Tools CRAN Task View.

I would also think it could contain things like Rcpp, R6, etc. 

-Greg
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On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 7:20 AM, Max Kuhn <mxkuhn at gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks for your work on this.

May I suggest a Git/GitHub repository for this?  That lowers the
barriers for contributions substantially, e.g. either via issues but
even better via pull requests (== point'n'click for you).  If you need
to mirror/push it to an SVN repository, I'm sure that's pretty easy to
do (and likely also to automate).

/Henrik

PS. Sorry, I'm not volunteering; too much on my plate.
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Hi,

this summer, after few mails on this list, i started something similar
(feeling the same need)... here is the repo

https://github.com/lbraglia/PackageDevelopmentTaskView

Currently it's quite freezed since i'm working on other projects in my
free software spare time (and likely i won't return to it) but could
be a starting point for someone else interested.


Best, Luca

PS in the case, following some mails with Dirk and Achim, HPC stuff
a-la Rcpp and friends should not be copied from Dirk's stuff, better
pointing... it was in my mental TODO

2015-01-22 18:23 GMT+01:00 Gregory R. Warnes <greg at warnes.net>:
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On Thu, 22 Jan 2015, Max Kuhn wrote:

            
Max, thanks for the suggestion. We had a somewhat related proposal on 
R-help from Luca Braglia a couple of months ago, suggesting a "Package 
Development" task view: 
https://mailman.stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2014-July/069454.html

He put up some ideas on Github:
https://github.com/lbraglia/PackageDevelopmentTaskView

When Luca asked me (ctv maintainer) and Dirk (HPC task view maintainer) 
for feedback off-list, I replied that it is important that task views are 
focused in order to be useful and maintainable. My feeling was that 
"PackageDevelopment" was too broad and also "ProgrammingTools" is still 
too board, I think. This could mean a lot of things/tools to a lot of 
people.

But maybe it would be to factor out some aspect that is sharp and 
clear(er)? Or split it up into bits where there are (more or less) 
objectively clear criteria for what goes in and what does not?

Best,
Z
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On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 12:45 PM, Achim Zeileis
<Achim.Zeileis at uibk.ac.at> wrote:
It's funny that you said that. As I was updating the RR CTV, it
realized what a beast it is right now. I thought about making a github
project earlier today that would have more detailed examples and
information.

I see two problems with that as the *sole* solution.

First, it is divorced from CRAN CTV and that is a place that people
know and will look. I had no idea of Luca's work for this exact
reason.

Secondly, might be intimidating for new R users who, I think, are the
targeted cohort for the CTVs.

How about a relatively broad definition that is succinct in content
with a link to a github repos?

Thanks,

Max
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On Thu, 22 Jan 2015, Max Kuhn wrote:

            
Yes, I agree. There should (an) additional task view(s) on CRAN related to 
this.
I think this doesn't fit well with the existing development model and 
might require duplicating changes in the <packagelist> of the task view. 
In order to be easily installable I need the <packagelist> in the task 
view on CRAN and not just in the linked list on Github.

Therefore, I would suggest splitting up the topic into things that are 
fairly sharp and clear. (Of course, it is impossible to avoid overlap 
completely.) For example, one could add "LanguageInterfaces" or something 
like that.

And the task views on CRAN can always include <links> to further 
documentation on Github and elsewhere. Especially when it comes to package 
development there are also clearly different preferences about what is 
good style or the right tools (say Github vs. R-Forge, knitr vs. Sweave, 
etc.)
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On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 1:05 PM, Achim Zeileis <Achim.Zeileis at uibk.ac.at> wrote:
Many of the task views are encyclopedic and still focused. Perhaps my
issues with RR are more related to how I currently organize it. I'll
try to solve it that way.
Looking at Luca's page, I think he does a great job of clustering
packages. My suggestions for focused topics are:

- Package Development*
- Foreign Languages Interfaces
- Code Analysis and Debugging
- Profiling and Benchmarking
- Unit Testing

* I would define the first one to be more narrow than the original definition.

I think that most of these would encompass less than 10 packages if we
don't include all the Rcpp depends =]
Yes. The comments above would not exclude this approach, which
is/was/might be my intention for RR.

Thanks,

Max
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On Thu, 22 Jan 2015, Max Kuhn wrote:

            
Yes, good suggestions. Now we only need willing maintainers :-)
It's probably still the fuzziest one in the list above.
:-)
True.

thx,
Z