[Rd] R-1.2.3: a small suggestion (PR#961)

[Peter Dalgaard BSA]

Kurt Hornik <Kurt.Hornik@ci.tuwien.ac.at> writes:

> With me quickly getting there this morning ...
> 
> I had asked about multiple version (and also platform) support several
> times during the past few years, and had always been told that this was
> not necessary.  So why does this keep coming up?

Well... 

> ...is not good enough.  Emacs has added [the equivalent of]
> 
> 	PREFIX/lib/R/site/VERSION
> 
> but that requires external control of version dependency at install
> time.  We actually have the required info through the DESCRIPTION db,
> hence could take care of this.

Instinctively, I don't think we want to go there... Wouldn't one end
up with (the equivalent of)

> .lib.loc
[1] "/usr/local/lib/R-1.3.0/library"
[2] "/usr/local/lib/R-1.2.3/library"
[3] "/usr/local/lib/R-1.2.2/library"
[4] "/usr/local/lib/R-1.2.1/library"
[5] "/usr/local/lib/R-1.2.0/library"
[6] "/usr/local/lib/R-1.1.1/library"
[7] "/usr/local/lib/R-1.1.0/library"
[8] "/usr/local/lib/R-1.0.1/library"

??

> But the effort is really only worth it when one is interested in having
> different versions installed at the same time.  Otherwise, you can
> always do
> 
> 	make install
> 	(cd PREFIX/lib; mv R R-VERSION)
> 
> yourself.

Um, I did that once and the walls came tumblin' down... (Or rather, I
tried to move the existing install out of the way before installing a
new one.) You also need to fixup the R_HOME_DIR variable in the R
script as Beebe mentioned. 

> Developers, as PD says, typically rely on running their development
> version from BUILDDIR.  Otoh, this is wrong because they could end up
> with an incompatible add-on package in the site tree.  

Er, how? 

> And we are back
> to the long-made decision that God did not want us to run multiple R
> versions at the same time.

IF we drop the "easy package migration" aspect and just let people do
separate installs with separate generation of site libraries, would we
not be in the clear? There's also an issue with private libraries of
course. Versioning those would put some administrative burden on the
end user, but could we not adapt an "if it breaks, you get to keep
both pieces" policy? 

-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard@biostat.ku.dk)             FAX: (+45) 35327907
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