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

[Kurt Hornik]

>>>>> Thomas Lumley writes:

> On Fri, 1 Jun 2001, Kurt Hornik wrote:
>> 
>> 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?
>> 
>> One can add a version layer, but one has to do this right.  Patterning
>> after the Emacs model is wrong.  Binary incompatabilities were pointed
>> out, so
>> 
>> PREFIX/lib/R/VERSION
>> PREFIX/lib/R/site
>> 
>> 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.
>> 

> Are you sure we have the right info? We know if a package is
> source-incompatible with old versions of R but we may not know if it
> is binary-incompatible with new versions.  I was surprised to find
> that survival seems to be binary-incompatible between 1.2.3 and 1.3.0
> -- at least, several bugs went away when I recompiled with pre1.3.0

Interesting.  I thought this would not be the case.  What you say is
that a package may claim it only needs R 1.2.2 but this might not run
under R 1.3.0 if compiled under R 1.2.2?

But version incompatibilities go beyond binary incompatibilties.  So
even if we have the info I am not sure what to do.

-k
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