CDs for R?

On 16 Nov 2004, at 23:39, (Ted Harding) wrote:
Now comes my suggestion to CRAN maintainer: this all would be easier, 
if you would produce a CD image file ('iso') that would contain a 
snapshot of the latest version: main binaries, all contributed 
packages, and docs. Getting somebody to help downloading this iso would 
be much easier than trying to collect all first and then make up your 
own cd image.

It's volunteer effort, so someone actually has to do this. Can you help?

Actually, only Windows and Mac users need binary versions of packages. 
The former because they don't have tools to install from source, the 
latter because they don't know that they have the tools (being command 
line challenged).

To Dirk Eddelbuettel: Yes indeed, Ubuntu gives human face to Debian and 
is a much more pleasant experience. However, changing OS for R may be 
asking too much. Further, Ubuntu/Debian comes with a tiny and biased 
selection of packages, and if that's not your kind of bias, you have 
got to go to the Internet again. Further, Ubuntu (and other Linuxes) 

Again, it reflects the interests of the volunteers involved. If you want to
see other things done, come join in and do them.

lag behind R. The current Ubuntu release comes with R 1.9.1, and it 
won't be upgraded but in the next release scheduled for April 2005 (and 
just in the same time as the next R, so that Ubuntu will be one R 
version off again). I guess the lag is even worse in packages.

This actually requires a response. Here is a quick log (from my mail folder)
about what new packages (of mine, can't speak for others) got uploaded
recently -- in most cases, this is on the day of the source release, so the
lag would be close to zero.

 575     Nov 08 Debian Installe (  20) rpy_0.4.0-1_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 576     Nov 09 Debian Installe (  14) strucchange_1.2.7-1_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 577     Nov 11 Debian Installe (  12) cluster_1.9.6-3_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 578     Nov 11 Debian Installe (  12) survival_2.15-2_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 579     Nov 12 Debian Installe (  26) octave2.1_2.1.62-1_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 580     Nov 12 Debian Installe (  12) cluster_1.9.6-4_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 581     Nov 12 Debian Installe (  14) mgcv_1.1.8-1_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 582     Nov 12 Debian Installe (  14) tseries_0.9.24-1_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 583     Nov 12 Debian Installe (  14) lattice_0.10.14-1_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 584     Nov 12 Debian Installe (  12) mgcv_1.1.8-2_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 585     Nov 13 Debian Installe (  14) dbd-odbc_1.13-1_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 586     Nov 13 Debian Installe (  14) ole-storage-lite_0.14-1_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 587     Nov 13 Debian Installe (  12) semidef-oct_2.2-21_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 588     Nov 14 Debian Installe (  15) wajig_2.0.13-1_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 589     Nov 14 Debian Installe (  14) sm_2.0.13-1_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 590     Nov 14 Debian Installe (  12) vr_7.2.10-2_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 591     Nov 15 Debian Installe (  34) r-base_2.0.1-1_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 592     Nov 15 Debian Installe (  24) gretl_1.3.0-1_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 593     Nov 16 Debian Installe (  14) survival_2.16-1_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 594     Nov 17 Debian Installe (  14) wajig_2.0.14-1_i386.changes ACCEPTED
 
I could go back further if you want. 
 
Now, if and when these get pressed into a release by Debian or Ubuntu I do
not control. Which is, I guess, why we're discussing archive snapshots in
this thread. 

Hth, Dirk

If your hair is standing up, then you are in extreme danger.
      -- http://www.usafa.af.mil/dfp/cockpit-phys/fp1ex3.htm