[Bioc-devel] Bioconductor 3.3 release schedule has been updated to reflect R release delay

[Dan Tenenbaum]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Steffen Neumann" <sneumann at ipb-halle.de>
> To: "Dan Tenenbaum" <dtenenba at fredhutch.org>, "bioc-devel" <bioc-devel at r-project.org>
> Sent: Monday, April 4, 2016 11:04:27 PM
> Subject: Re: [Bioc-devel] Bioconductor 3.3 release schedule has been updated to reflect R release delay

> Hi,
> 
> On Mo, 2016-04-04 at 12:00 -0700, Dan Tenenbaum wrote:
>> Accordingly, Bioconductor has updated its release schedule:
>> https://bioconductor.org/developers/release-schedule/
> 
> Thanks for the notification.
>> [...]
>> The reason for the delay in R's release schedule is the new Windows
>> toolchain and the need to make sure all packages install, build, and
>> check against this toolchain (as has been discussed on bioc-devel
> 
> I have to say that I always have been perplexed by late changes
> in the BioC toolchain. In most big projects I know,
> the toolchain is the first thing that will get selected/frozen,
> so that the remaining development cycle can depend on it.

To clarify, this toolchain is being adopted by R and CRAN. Bioconductor needs to support it since our next release will use R-3.3.0 which is going to use this toolchain. The scheduling was not our decision or choice. 

Once before this toolchain was being considered (I think it was in 2013) and then R or CRAN decided it wasn't ready for prime time.
Again, we followed their lead because we have to use the same toolchain. (There is no such thing as a "BioC toolchain".)
As far as I know, 2013 and now are the only times the toolchain has changed in such a major way that introduced backward incompatibility (at least since I started in 2010).

Dan


> 
> Yours,
> Steffen
> 
> --
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