[Rd] Re: [R] A long digression on packages

[Gabor Grothendieck]

On 6/5/05, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb at cesmail.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> 
> > Of course, with disk sizes as they are now, it's not unreasonable to
> > install all of the contributed CRAN packages on a PC.  Then
> > help.search() *will* do searches through them all.
> 
> Some of them are very specialized, and some of them have non-CRAN
> dependencies. I've done a few "load everything from CRAN" operations on
> my Linux boxes, only to overflow the warnings list with missing Linux
> software. And, as an example, I have zero use for molecular biology
> packages.
> 
> Dirk Eddelbuettel has done a lot of work integrating the CRAN and other
> R package collections with the Debian GNU/Linux package management
> system. This rather neatly solves the non-CRAN dependency problems, at
> least for Debian.
> 
> Other people have done similar things for Perl packages and Common Lisp
> packages, both in Debian and in Gentoo's Portage package management
> system. CRAN could easily be integrated into Portage, but nobody has
> stepped forward to volunteer. Maybe when I retire ... :)
> 
> And where does this leave Windows users? There's nothing like Debian or
> Portage for them; CRAN would have to build it from scratch.

I think that some time ago there was a discussion of having a downloadable
file that oould be used to help.search through so that a relatively small
download and no package installation would allow a comprehensive
offline help.search of all CRAN packages.   An online version of 
help.search might be another possibility.