[Bioc-devel] Old package versions / Bioc archive of package's *.tar.gz releases?

Thu Oct 5 23:21:30 CEST 2017

On 10/05/2017 05:14 PM, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 5, 2017 at 1:46 PM, Martin Morgan
> <martin.morgan at roswellpark.org> wrote:
>> On 10/05/2017 01:50 PM, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
>>>
>>> Is there an easily accessible archive for Bioconductor packages
>>> similar to what is provided on CRAN where you can find all released
>>> versions of a package, e.g.
>>> https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/PSCBS/?
>>>
>>> Say I want to access the source code for affy 1.18.0.  Here are the
>>> two approaches I'm aware of and none of them are particularly
>>> appealing to me.  Does anyone know of a better approach?
>>
>>
>> The only option is to scrape, and that's approximate. One could build an
>> archive
>>
>> pkg,version,branch,from_svn_rev,to_svn_rev
>>
>> and then consult that. Packages are supposed to increment the 'z' of x.y.z,
>> but I'm sure there are many exceptions. I believe Jim Hester has an svn
>> script for this, but I wasn't able to locate it; it would be fast in git.
> 
> Thanks.  About 'z' not being increased.  Does the Bioc build servers
> release (a) continuously or (b) only when it detects a version change
> x.y.z -> x.y.z+1?  If it does it continuously, then what x.y.z is
> installed does matter on when it was downloaded/installed, correct?
> On the other hand, if it only builds in when a version bump is
> detected, then one can at least narrow it down to a much narrow set of
> x.y.z submits (if multiple exists).

The builder only pushes for upward increments, so a commit without a 
'positive' version bump would be built but not pushed to the public 
repository. I'm not sure how rigorously this policy was enforced before, 
e.g., 2005.

Of course there are exceptions, e.g., it is occasionally (at most one or 
two times a release cycle) necessary to flush the public repository 
entirely, and then whatever is built is pushed. And there is nothing 
stopping the user from doing a check-out from svn. Perhaps others will 
chime in with the gory / correct details.

Martin

> 
>>
>> For your future self, this
>>
>>    https://bioconductor.org/packages/3.5/bioc/src/contrib/Archive/S4Vectors/
>>
>> provides a hint of a change coming with the next release -- archives of all
>> RELEASE package versions, starting in Bioc 3.6. (Kudos to Val for
>> implementing this)
> 
> This is great!  Thanks Val for this.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Henrik
> 
>>
>> Martin
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> # APPROACH 1: Download from http://bioconductor.org
>>>
>>> The best approach I know now is to try to guess the date when this was
>>> released in order to identify the Bioconductor release version.
>>> Something like this:
>>>
>>> 1. Guess around 2010.
>>>
>>> 2. Go to http://bioconductor.org/about/release-announcements/ and see
>>> what R versions were in use during 2010.  I find R 2.6.x and R 2.7.x.
>>> The Bioc version for those R versions (same URL) are Bioc 2.1 and Bioc
>>> 2.2.  Let's focus on Bioc 2.2 (because I happen to know that is the
>>> one)
>>>
>>> 3. Following the Bioc 2.2 link on above URL to get to
>>> http://bioconductor.org/packages/2.2/BiocViews.html.
>>>
>>> 4. Click through, one eventually gets to
>>> http://bioconductor.org/packages/2.2/bioc/html/affy.html
>>>
>>> 5. The "Source" link points to
>>> http://bioconductor.org/packages/2.2/bioc/src/contrib/affy_1.18.2.tar.gz
>>>
>>> Say I wanted affy 1.16.0 instead and I made the wrong guess in Step 2,
>>> I can extrapolate from (Bioc 2.2, affy 1.18.x) finding that I should
>>> go to Bioc 2.1 to find affy 1.16.x (because releases have even minor
>>> version numbers).   It works, but is a bit tedious if you need to do
>>> this more than once.
>>>
>>> Also, I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Bioc on archive the most
>>> recent package version under each release, which means there is no
>>> affy_1.18.0.tar.gz available for download.  Is that correct?
>>>
>>>
>>> # APPROACH 2: Version control
>>>
>>> $ git clone https://git.bioconductor.org/packages/affy
>>> $ cd affy
>>>
>>> # Package releases/versions are not tagged
>>> $ git tag
>>> [empty]
>>>
>>> # Check Bioc release branches
>>> $ git branch -a
>>> * master
>>>     remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
>>>     remotes/origin/RELEASE_1_0
>>>     remotes/origin/RELEASE_1_0_branch
>>>     remotes/origin/RELEASE_1_4
>>>     remotes/origin/RELEASE_1_4_branch
>>>     remotes/origin/RELEASE_1_5
>>> [...]
>>>     remotes/origin/RELEASE_3_5
>>>     remotes/origin/master
>>>
>>> That's back to above game of trying to narrow down which Bioc release
>>> I should look at.  A similar approach is to look at the commit log:
>>>
>>> $ git log DESCRIPTION
>>>
>>> commit 35573048255b398f99ff1d3560906b2121912248
>>> Author: Herve Pages <hpages at fhcrc.org>
>>> Date:   Mon Apr 24 19:50:57 2017 +0000
>>>
>>>       bump x.y.z versions to odd y after creation of 3_5 branch
>>>
>>>       git-svn-id:
>>>
>>> file:///home/git/hedgehog.fhcrc.org/bioconductor/trunk/madman/Rpacks/affy@129129
>>> bc3139a8-67e5-0310-9ffc-ced21a209358
>>>
>>> commit aa4c2d648658e8c2cca2baf651aea92df55a4392
>>> Author: Herve Pages <hpages at fhcrc.org>
>>> Date:   Mon Apr 24 19:25:24 2017 +0000
>>>
>>>       bump x.y.z versions to even y prior to creation of 3_5 branch
>>>
>>>       git-svn-id:
>>>
>>> file:///home/git/hedgehog.fhcrc.org/bioconductor/trunk/madman/Rpacks/affy@129126
>>> bc3139a8-67e5-0310-9ffc-ced21a209358
>>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>> and try to locate affy 1.18.0 by peeking at the DESCRIPTION file history.
>>>
>>> Does anyone know of a better/more automated approach?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Henrik
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Bioc-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioc-devel
>>>
>>
>>
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