Porting "unmaintained" packages to post R 2.10.0 era
Hi Prof Brian, Thank you for your email and for writing MASS. This book is brilliant. ----- Original Message ----
From: Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> To: Ben Rhelp <benrhelp at yahoo.co.uk> Cc: r-help at r-project.org Sent: Thu, 16 June, 2011 14:48:00 Subject: Re: [R] Porting "unmaintained" packages to post R 2.10.0 era On Thu, 16 Jun 2011, Mr Rhelp wrote:
[...]
Sounds like you are doing this on Windows (please do tell us!) and trying to start with a Windows binary package.
Yes, sorry about that:
version
_ platform x86_64-pc-mingw32 arch x86_64 os mingw32 system x86_64, mingw32 status major 2 minor 13.0 year 2011 month 04 day 13 svn rev 55427 language R version.string R version 2.13.0 (2011-04-13) [...]
Is there a HOWTO/porting guide for packages pre R 2.10.0 to post R 2.10.0?
You don't need one. You start with the package sources, and install those. If you don't have the sources, you ask the author for the sources. But on the page you mention, I see 'unix/macs use the *.tar.gz version' by which they mean 'the source package'. (Note that for GPLed packages such as this one, the sources must be made available.) There are some errors in the format of the Rd files, but both packages install in R 2.13.0. However, you are supposed to get Java components from a site which no longer exists, so I think you are going to need to ask the author for help. One advantage of recent R is that to install packages like these from the sources you just need R, so there is no reason to distribute Windows binary packages (for such packages, with no C/C++/Fortran code).
Ok, my thinking was completely wrong. Your response help me to get things working. I have updated the packages to work with the latest version of the third party software (SoNIA) and I have contacted the original author with the aim to distribute some updated versions of the packages. [...] Thanks a lot again for your help. Best regards, Ben