CRAN problem with plyr-1.4.1
On 12.04.2011 17:08, Ian Davis wrote:
2011/4/12 Uwe Ligges <ligges at statistik.tu-dortmund.de
<mailto:ligges at statistik.tu-dortmund.de>>
On 12.04.2011 14:52, Ian Davis wrote:
I really do appreciate the help from you and Douglas on
resolving this
problem. However, I respectfully disagree on a few points:
- install.packages() was broken and failing to install successfully.
install.packages() works well, it is *not* broken.
Perhaps I was unclear in my choice of words -- install.packages() *is*
not "broken" in the general sense; it does work well, most of the
time. However, at the time I reported the problem, it *was* failing to
install plyr, using three different mirrors. That is,
install.packages("plyr")
gave an error message and did not successfully install the package,
whether I specified the mirror at CMU, NIH, or UNC-CH. That's all I
meant by "broken". I understand that you believe this *should not* or
even *cannot* happen, but I'm telling you that it did. This may
indicate there is a bug in the mirroring process, in that, under
exceptional conditions yet to be identified, install.packages() et al.
are unable to retrieve correct, consistent information from a mirror for
a period of time.
Then, can we have the ERROR message, please? Otherwise the only explanation I can guess is that a mirror grabs the contents of a repository exactly in the second the repository is updated and that is unlikely, particularly if more than one mirror is involved.
Again, to be clear, I'm not protesting that the *newest* packages were unavailable on these three mirrors. I'm protesting that *no version at all* of plyr was available from these three mirrors, using install.packages(), at the time I reported the problem. I'll leave it at this -- I'm only trying to help out by reporting a bug in the process. If no one cares, I'll shut up and sit down.
We do care, but the mirrors seem to be fine and hence we cannot debug what you have seen before. Best, Uwe
Regards, Ian