Hi Folks, I'm sure I'm speaking for more than a few (though possibly a minority) here. There's something of a hidden assumption that R users can readily download whatever they need from CRAN. Some of us are on narrow bandwidth dialup connections, so downloading large quantities of stuff is out of the question (e.g. at approx. 5min/MB, it would take over 2 days to download a single CD). The meat of CRAN (including contributed packages and documentation) is enough to fill 5 CDs, though one individual probably wouldn't be interested in all of that. (And, before anyone asks, no I won't be seeing broadband in the foreseeable future!) I've worked round this in various ways in the past. Some Linux distributions (e.g. RedHat, SuSE) come with the basics of R on their CDs, so when I've upgraded Linux I've got a new R (though not the latest). Linux Emporium once obligingly did me a custom CD very cheaply with the contributed packages. A friend with high-bandwidth access did me the 5 CDs in return for a pub lunch. And so on. One can get round it by bothering someone. What I'd like to suggest, for consideration, is that along with the stirling work done at many centres to set up and maintain mirrors of CRAN, some might consider offering also the service of burning CDs on request, for a reasonable charge. The difficulty, of course, is that it's going to take someone's time om something which may well not be their proper business. (I'm prompted to think about this again by the emergence of R-2 -> 2.0.1 -> one day soon? -> 2.1. This is clearly a major advance in R and changes several things, so I'm looking at a major download operation, if not by me then by somebody that I can get CDs from, if I'm to be sure of being up to date on everything I'd like to have. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.) I'd be interested in people's comments on this proposal. Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 [NB: New number!] Date: 16-Nov-04 Time: 21:39:14 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
CDs for R?
11 messages · David Whiting, Adaikalavan Ramasamy, Duncan Murdoch +5 more
(Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk> writes: [...]
There's something of a hidden assumption that R users can readily download whatever they need from CRAN.
[...]
What I'd like to suggest, for consideration, is that along with the stirling work done at many centres to set up and maintain mirrors of CRAN, some might consider offering also the service of burning CDs on request, for a reasonable charge. The difficulty, of course, is that it's going to take someone's time om something which may well not be their proper business.
I have been in a similar situation a fair bit in the past and understand your position. Now I'm back in the UK and have a reasonably fast broadband connection at home I'd be willing to help out now and then. I guess that to make this work more generally we would need to work out how to make sure that only the CDs get burned and not the prospective "customer" or "supplier". As for charges, I think I'd only be interested in covering costs of the CDs and postage. I don't have industrial strength hardware so I could not get into mass production. Perhaps we could establish informal groups of "R buddies" where, for example, I help you and a small number of other people out each time there is an update and we establish some kind of trust between ourselves, rather than new people coming to me each time. People could sign up to be "suppliers" and be allocated or choose a group of people they provide the service to. I would feel comfortable with something like this working for people who have been on the R-help list for a while and have some recgonised identity, and something to lose in terms of reputation if they take advantage. But, it is possible that new users might need it the most and, by definition, we might not feel comfortable dealing with new people. Dave
David Whiting University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
There was a similar thread earlier this year http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/help/04/03/1785.html I think I previously made the suggestion that you could download this from an internet cafe. I am not sure if these cafes allow you to plug in your own laptop or burn it for you. If you have a DVD readable CDROM and a DVD writer, you could opt for that. Failing that, you could see if someone in your local R-group or university department has the latest R on disc. But the real question is that if there are enough people on slow connection that are interested in obtaining R. Regards, Adai
On Tue, 2004-11-16 at 21:39, Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
Hi Folks, I'm sure I'm speaking for more than a few (though possibly a minority) here. There's something of a hidden assumption that R users can readily download whatever they need from CRAN. Some of us are on narrow bandwidth dialup connections, so downloading large quantities of stuff is out of the question (e.g. at approx. 5min/MB, it would take over 2 days to download a single CD). The meat of CRAN (including contributed packages and documentation) is enough to fill 5 CDs, though one individual probably wouldn't be interested in all of that. (And, before anyone asks, no I won't be seeing broadband in the foreseeable future!) I've worked round this in various ways in the past. Some Linux distributions (e.g. RedHat, SuSE) come with the basics of R on their CDs, so when I've upgraded Linux I've got a new R (though not the latest). Linux Emporium once obligingly did me a custom CD very cheaply with the contributed packages. A friend with high-bandwidth access did me the 5 CDs in return for a pub lunch. And so on. One can get round it by bothering someone. What I'd like to suggest, for consideration, is that along with the stirling work done at many centres to set up and maintain mirrors of CRAN, some might consider offering also the service of burning CDs on request, for a reasonable charge. The difficulty, of course, is that it's going to take someone's time om something which may well not be their proper business. (I'm prompted to think about this again by the emergence of R-2 -> 2.0.1 -> one day soon? -> 2.1. This is clearly a major advance in R and changes several things, so I'm looking at a major download operation, if not by me then by somebody that I can get CDs from, if I'm to be sure of being up to date on everything I'd like to have. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.) I'd be interested in people's comments on this proposal. Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 [NB: New number!] Date: 16-Nov-04 Time: 21:39:14 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
______________________________________________ R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
Adaikalavan Ramasamy ramasamy at cancer.org.uk Centre for Statistics in Medicine http://www.ihs.ox.ac.uk/csm/ Cancer Research UK Tel : 01865 226 677 Old Road Campus, Headington, Oxford Fax : 01865 226 962
On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 21:39:14 -0000 (GMT), (Ted Harding)
<Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk> wrote:
Hi Folks, I'm sure I'm speaking for more than a few (though possibly a minority) here. There's something of a hidden assumption that R users can readily download whatever they need from CRAN. Some of us are on narrow bandwidth dialup connections, so downloading large quantities of stuff is out of the question (e.g. at approx. 5min/MB, it would take over 2 days to download a single CD). The meat of CRAN (including contributed packages and documentation) is enough to fill 5 CDs, though one individual probably wouldn't be interested in all of that. (And, before anyone asks, no I won't be seeing broadband in the foreseeable future!)
The tarballs for the base source installation are only around 10 MB. That's only 50 minutes for you to do the main download. Then you can pick and choose what other packages to install. (It's 23 MB to download the Windows binary; I don't know the size of the Linux binaries.) Is it really worth setting up a duplication service? How much would you think is reasonable to pay for a CD to be mailed to you? Duncan Murdoch
Ted,
On Tue, Nov 16, 2004 at 09:39:14PM -0000, Ted Harding wrote:
Hi Folks, I'm sure I'm speaking for more than a few (though possibly a minority) here. There's something of a hidden assumption that R users can readily download whatever they need from CRAN. Some of us are on narrow bandwidth dialup connections, so downloading large quantities of stuff is out of the question (e.g. at approx. 5min/MB, it would take over 2 days to download a single CD). The meat of CRAN (including contributed packages and documentation) is enough to fill 5 CDs, though one individual probably wouldn't be interested in all of that.
I'll cc this reply to Mark Walker. His shop, budgetlinuxcds.com / blcds.com, is one of the resellers of my Quantian 'scientific / cluster-computing workstation on a bootable dvd' Linux distribution / environment (see http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian for more on this). Mark has been consistently responsive while offering a low-cost cd/dvd service (of which I receive no cut, in case you're wondering about disclaimers). I think he'd be happy to add regular snapshots of certain portions of http://cran.r-project.org/src/, maybe for the sources and/or windows binaries, for his failry reasonable fees.
(And, before anyone asks, no I won't be seeing broadband in the foreseeable future!) I've worked round this in various ways in the past. Some Linux distributions (e.g. RedHat, SuSE) come with the basics of R on their CDs, so when I've upgraded Linux
I cannot resist mentioning that Debian will almost surely have the best R coverage with R, several dozen CRAN packages, ESS and many other goodies. Debian may well not be for everyone, but maybe Ubuntu will make the initial experience more pleasant. Hope this helps, Dirk
I've got a new R (though not the latest). Linux Emporium once obligingly did me a custom CD very cheaply with the contributed packages. A friend with high-bandwidth access did me the 5 CDs in return for a pub lunch. And so on. One can get round it by bothering someone. What I'd like to suggest, for consideration, is that along with the stirling work done at many centres to set up and maintain mirrors of CRAN, some might consider offering also the service of burning CDs on request, for a reasonable charge. The difficulty, of course, is that it's going to take someone's time om something which may well not be their proper business. (I'm prompted to think about this again by the emergence of R-2 -> 2.0.1 -> one day soon? -> 2.1. This is clearly a major advance in R and changes several things, so I'm looking at a major download operation, if not by me then by somebody that I can get CDs from, if I'm to be sure of being up to date on everything I'd like to have. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.) I'd be interested in people's comments on this proposal. Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 [NB: New number!] Date: 16-Nov-04 Time: 21:39:14 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
______________________________________________ R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
If your hair is standing up, then you are in extreme danger.
-- http://www.usafa.af.mil/dfp/cockpit-phys/fp1ex3.htm
On 16 Nov 2004, at 23:39, (Ted Harding) wrote:
Some of us are on narrow bandwidth dialup connections, so downloading large quantities of stuff is out of the question (e.g. at approx. 5min/MB, it would take over 2 days to download a single CD). The meat of CRAN (including contributed packages and documentation) is enough to fill 5 CDs, though one individual probably wouldn't be interested in all of that.
5 CDs sounds 4 too many. I once burnt CDs for my students, and they
fitted nicely in one CD (Windows binaries, all packages as Windows
binaries and sources, contributed documents). I guess you can fit
Windows, Mac and some Linux binaries all in one CD.
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.
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)
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.
cheers, jari oksanen
--
Jari Oksanen, Oulu, Finland
I note similar discussions re. 'linux live' distributions, and another key point made there is that, with a moving target (ie. several significant upgrades a year), one shouldn't contribute to the vast mountain of landfill CDRs already represent. Which makes me wonder about changing the model a bit ie. folks who want it on CD send a CDRW or USB key with a stamped, self-addressed enveloped to somewhere (central, or the 'buddy list' already suggested) where the requested files will be burnt on. The 'cost' of burning these could be seen as one consequence of the GPL! That way, most of the 'manufacture & distribution' costs stay where they should ie. with the person who wants the CD, and we aren't generating more rapidly-useless CDs... Stuart ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jari Oksanen" <jari.oksanen at oulu.fi> To: <ted.harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Cc: <r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch> Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2004 6:25 AM Subject: Re: [R] CDs for R?
On 16 Nov 2004, at 23:39, (Ted Harding) wrote:
Some of us are on narrow bandwidth dialup connections, so downloading large quantities of stuff is out of the question (e.g. at approx. 5min/MB, it would take over 2 days to download a single CD). The meat of CRAN (including contributed packages and documentation) is enough to fill 5 CDs, though one individual probably wouldn't be interested in all of that.
5 CDs sounds 4 too many. I once burnt CDs for my students, and they
fitted nicely in one CD (Windows binaries, all packages as Windows
binaries and sources, contributed documents). I guess you can fit
Windows, Mac and some Linux binaries all in one CD.
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.
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)
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.
cheers, jari oksanen
--
Jari Oksanen, Oulu, Finland
______________________________________________ R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide!
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html This message has been scanned but we cannot guarantee that it and any attachments are free from viruses or other damaging content: you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.
On Wed, Nov 17, 2004 at 08:25:54AM +0200, Jari Oksanen wrote:
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
On Wed, 2004-11-17 at 16:54, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
On Wed, Nov 17, 2004 at 08:25:54AM +0200, Jari Oksanen wrote:
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?
Probably not. Not because I wouldn't be willing, but I may not be able... I have done this a couple of time using wget to build a local "subtree" of selected parts of CRAN. Then running mkisofs was pretty simple. I guess this could be automated pretty easily if you have the repository already at hand: all you need is mkisofs + info of its targets. However, I am not that kind of guru. All this would require that people think this is worthwhile. I think that the general feeling has been that there is no need for a "R-current.iso" snapshot (or the same as a valid Windows name). So this is an academic issue (suits me).
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.
I know this is volunteer work, and I do appreciate this volunteer work. It is all biased -- hence the formulation of "your kind of bias". At the moment I have no idea how to build a deb package of R packages, so I don't know what to say.
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. 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.
They go, I guess, through a testing period in Debian, and if they don't wait for anybody else, they may appear in some version of Debian after that. In Debian repository you typically see much older versions. As to Ubuntu (that I know a bit better), they will go into next release which is nearly six months ahead (they are not upgraded in between). Actually, Ubuntu is a bad choice if you just want to have R, since R is not among the core packages, but it is unsupported. Moreover, Ubuntu is a bad choice for the original problem of slow wires: Even for an ordinary install you need internet connection, if you want to get beyond a very rudimentary system. I just forgot this in my previous message: when you're wired, you think it's natural to be wired. So forget Ubuntu if you want to have R without fast internet connection. I have Ubuntu since it was about the only easily managed powerpc system I found. At the moment, I have R 2.0.0 built from source distribution there. Packages are from source files, too. Thanks for the good work with Debian! cheers, jari oksanen
Jari Oksanen <jarioksa at sun3.oulu.fi>
Thanks to everyone who joined in the discussion about this and made comments or suggestions. Special thanks too to those who mailed me off-list with further suggestions, and offers to help me privately. I'm appreciative of the latter, and may take up some offers, but I hope it was clear originally that I was raising the issue as one which might affect several people and perhaps justify making some special provision which would ease the situation. The most positive general suggestion, I thought, came from Jari Oksanen:
On 17-Nov-04 Jari Oksanen wrote:
[...]
5 CDs sounds 4 too many. I once burnt CDs for my students,
and they fitted nicely in one CD (Windows binaries, all
packages as Windows binaries and sources, contributed
documents). I guess you can fit Windows, Mac and some
Linux binaries all in one CD.
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.
This would provide a ready target for people who need to ask someone else to do the job for them. It's much easier to specify "download the ISO image from the following URL and burn me a CD" then to hope that a possibly ill-specified 'wget' would produce the desired result (as happened when Linux Emporium did me a CD: it was mostly there, but there were gaps and some things I hadn't wanted). So I'd like to back Jari's proposal for an ISO image to be planted on CRAN as a separate file with its own unique URL. Exactly what its content should be may still be discussable, but I would be satisfied with full sources and documentation for R base and all contributed packages (maybe the Newsletter would also be handy). I was also interested in Dirk Edelbuettel's suggestion related to Quantian:
On 17-Nov-04 Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
I'll cc this reply to Mark Walker. His shop, budgetlinuxcds.com / blcds.com, is one of the resellers of my Quantian 'scientific / cluster-computing workstation on a bootable dvd' Linux distribution / environment (see http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian for more on this). Mark has been consistently responsive while offering a low-cost cd/dvd service (of which I receive no cut, in case you're wondering about disclaimers). I think he'd be happy to add regular snapshots of certain portions of http://cran.r-project.org/src/ , maybe for the sources and/or windows binaries, for his failry reasonable fees.
Since Mark would need a specification of what to download and burn, this could pehaps be a convenient primary source of burned CDs derived from the proposed CRAN ISO. I also liked David Whiting's suggestion of "R buddies" who would be willing to provide CDs for cost + postage to people. Though I am (for obvious reasons) not in a position to download and burn the CD in the first place, I'd be happy to join in, and help coordinate and distribute (once someone has sent me a CD, it's then straightforward to produce more copies and mail these on, though like David I don't have "industrial strength hardware" and would only be able to do it on a small scale -- but that reinforces the case for a group of "buddies" who could share the load!):
On 16-Nov-04 David Whiting wrote:
[...] I have been in a similar situation a fair bit in the past and understand your position. Now I'm back in the UK and have a reasonably fast broadband connection at home I'd be willing to help out now and then. I guess that to make this work more generally we would need to work out how to make sure that only the CDs get burned and not the prospective "customer" or "supplier". As for charges, I think I'd only be interested in covering costs of the CDs and postage. I don't have industrial strength hardware so I could not get into mass production. Perhaps we could establish informal groups of "R buddies" where, for example, I help you and a small number of other people out each time there is an update and we establish some kind of trust between ourselves, rather than new people coming to me each time. People could sign up to be "suppliers" and be allocated or choose a group of people they provide the service to. I would feel comfortable with something like this working for people who have been on the R-help list for a while and have some recgonised identity, and something to lose in terms of reputation if they take advantage. But, it is possible that new users might need it the most and, by definition, we might not feel comfortable dealing with new people.
This suggestion could conveniently be linked with the suggestion for "ISO on CRAN". On a final point:
On 16-Nov-04 Adaikalavan Ramasamy wrote:
[...] But the real question is that if there are enough people on slow connection that are interested in obtaining R.
Well, I have to agree with that! If I were the only person in this position then it wouldn't be fair to put pressure on others to provide the "general support". As I explained, I do feel that there are probably a number of people who might benefit (though, apart from David whose woes are in the past, there have so far been no "me too!" posts). Hoping for further comment, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 [NB: New number!] Date: 17-Nov-04 Time: 20:16:51 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
So I'd like to back Jari's proposal for an ISO image to be planted on CRAN as a separate file with its own unique URL. Exactly what its content should be may still be discussable, but I would be satisfied with full sources and documentation for R base and all contributed packages (maybe the Newsletter would also be handy).
You do realize that this would change at least daily? So it really isn't something that one would want to be mirrored around the CRAN network. Even for the sources it is tricky, as those of us who rsync part of CRAN know -- for example src/contrib does not contain all the current packages, the orphaned ones being links. One would probably want recent R-patched and R-devel tarballs, and they are not actually on CRAN. For binaries (and I suspect that most `customers' would want binaries) it is trickier still, as to meet GPL some of the sources in the Archive area would need to be included (and we have not bothered to work out what). I suggest a suitable first step is for some interested party to write a script to prepare such an ISO image and to put it (the image) up for comment (modern OSes can mount such an image, allowing browsing). I suspect it would be worth producing only say monthly.
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