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Wishlist: install.packages to look for the newest version (PR#13852)

4 messages · Thomas Lumley, Ulrike Grömping, Uwe Ligges

Original
Uwe Ligges
# 
Ulrike,

if you install from source, you always get the most recent version of 
the package given it does not depend on a newer version of R.

If you want a binary package, you also get the newest version - that was 
newest at the time we stopped building binaries for that version of R.
We (or better I if we only talk about Windows, but similar for all other 
platforms) cannot build for each R version any more. In that case we'd 
have to build even 11 binary versions for Windows just for the R-2.x.y 
series now. Binary repositories are fixed at some time (for Windows once 
the first patchlevel release of the next R version is out, e.g. at the 
time of the R-2.9.1 release the binary builds for R-2.8.x had been stopped).

So please upgrade your version of R or compile yourself from sources for 
the R version you need the particular package for.

Best wishes,
Uwe Ligges
groemping at bht-berlin.de wrote:
Thomas Lumley
# 
Uwe,

I think Ulrike is making a different suggestion, that install.packages() should fetch the binary that has been built for the current version of R.

This would be a bad idea for a different reason -- in general it is not possible to be sure that the package works with an older version of R. The R version dependency isn't enough for two reasons. The first is that the author may well not know that the package fails with an older version of R and so would not have listed a dependency. The second is that the binary versions may be incompatible even if the source versions are compatible.

You can always download a binary package from CRAN in a browser and use the option to install from a local zip file. Or, as Uwe suggests, get a new version of R.

What I think might be useful if it's not too difficult is a warning from install.packages() that a newer version of the package you were installing is available for the current version of R.

      -thomas
On Fri, 24 Jul 2009 ligges at statistik.tu-dortmund.de wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

        
Thomas Lumley			Assoc. Professor, Biostatistics
tlumley at u.washington.edu	University of Washington, Seattle

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Ulrike Grömping
    

    

      
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Thomas,

yes, I think, if installation of the new version is not safe, a warning
would be a very good idea, perhaps also with a hint on how to manually
install from the repository for the new version of R ? 

Regards, Ulrike

        
Thomas Lumley wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

        

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Uwe Ligges
    

    

      
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Thomas Lumley wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
That could be done, of course, but not that easy (see below * ). But 
then, should we also warn in general (say if 
[install,update,available].packages() is called) that a newer R version 
is available?

I thought that has been discussed some years ago and the decision was 
not to warn, but now it is 2009 and we may want something different.

(*) Not easy for former releases. For future releases, it is possible to 
always look additionally into the "R-release" respository, but it means 
that an additional packages file must be downloaded (which is not funny 
for modem connections) in order to be able to compare versions and just 
to generate a warning.

Best wishes,
Uwe