[Bioc-devel] Short URLs for packages?

[Wolfgang Huber]

> 5. At the end of the day I find myself casting my lot for landing pages with the form
>  http://bioconductor.org/release/BiocGenerics/
> which leads to a little less typing but not the dynamic resolution that started this (version) of the thread.

But we already have dynamic resolution. Even http://bioconductor.org/release/BiocGenerics will point to different package versions (e.g. after bugfixes) as time goes by.
So the attribute “release” is dynamically resolved. 
All I am asking for is another attribute that means “the best that we currently have”, i.e. release if it exists and devel otherwise.

I didn’t expect so much disagreement on so mundane an issue. And there are plenty of ways of doing this outside the Bioc webpage, any of the public ’tiny URL’ services, through my own webpage, or by just telling people to google the package name.

> On 24 Mar 2015, at 12:14, Martin Morgan <mtmorgan at fredhutch.org> wrote:
> 
> 4. In terms of best practices, it seems like articles are about particular versions and should cite the package as such, for instance if only in devel when the paper is being written as .../3.1/..., but that there is no substantive cost to also referencing 'current version available [after April, 2015] at .../release/….

I don’t agree. This would mean that for each later version of the same package, even just after a trivial typo fix, there is either no article, or another one would have to be written. I don’t think this has an easily formalized solution, some good judgement is required.
E.g. try to apply the above reasoning to http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003118

Wolfgang