[ESS-bugs] ESS 13.09-1 with old R versions fails pretty badly

[Vitalie Spinu]

 >>> Rodney Sparapani on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 07:47:38 -0500 wrote:

 > On 10/29/2013 05:04 AM, Martin Maechler wrote:
 >> So even though we should implement the above workaround
 >> I'd still consider Rodney's proposal of automatically using an old version of
 >> ESS when the above  for(.. ..)  source(f)  fails.
 >> 
 >> Martin

 > And it might not be all of ESS that needs to be cloned.  Just the
 > part that handles R; probably ess-r-d.el I'm guessing.  This would
 > require some testing though.  But perhaps, the testing could be
 > automated.

It is more complex than this. R code is everywhere nowadays. Let's not
go in that domain, it will be a pain to maintain and explain to the
users. We already have install related questions more often than we
want.

I appreciate that Martin started working on that, as I don't have the
necessary tools and experience to deal with such old R versions, but
please keep in mind MELPA users and people (like me) who don't use
make. 

That essentially means that you have to ship ESSR_<version>.tar.gz with
ESS if you want to go that route. Keeping installed copy of ESSR in SVN
is better IMO, and it looks like Martin is going in that direction.

   Vitalie

PS: Also, don't forget folks on remotes:) Then need to be able to
install from a web source.