Packages and their Management

I was reading with interest Prof. Ripley's article in the May 2005
edition R News entitled "Packages and their Management in R2.1.0".

Does anybody know if it is possible to install.packages() directly
from a Subversion repository; I thought it might be possible to add
an option method="svn" to the function?

It's download.file that is used to retrieve packages (see the help file). 
You would need a suitable client and a suitable syntax to specify the tree 
you wanted, but it would be possible.

I would be surprised if you put actual sources of a package into svn:
R CMD build both adds things and changes the DESCRIPTION file.

Ideally, one might want to add the Subversion version number to the R
package version in the DESCRIPTION file for consistency.

You are allowed to do that: just add a field for your own use. The vast 
majority of packages are not under svn, of course, and I tag a released 
package with its released number (just as the R sources do).

Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595