[Rd] Wishlist: install.packages to look for the newest version (PR#13852)

[Ulrike Grömping]

Thomas,

yes, I think, if installation of the new version is not safe, a warning
would be a very good idea, perhaps also with a hint on how to manually
install from the repository for the new version of R ? 

Regards, Ulrike


Thomas Lumley wrote:
> 
> 
> Uwe,
> 
> I think Ulrike is making a different suggestion, that install.packages()
> should fetch the binary that has been built for the current version of R.
> 
> This would be a bad idea for a different reason -- in general it is not
> possible to be sure that the package works with an older version of R. The
> R version dependency isn't enough for two reasons. The first is that the
> author may well not know that the package fails with an older version of R
> and so would not have listed a dependency. The second is that the binary
> versions may be incompatible even if the source versions are compatible.
> 
> You can always download a binary package from CRAN in a browser and use
> the option to install from a local zip file. Or, as Uwe suggests, get a
> new version of R.
> 
> What I think might be useful if it's not too difficult is a warning from
> install.packages() that a newer version of the package you were installing
> is available for the current version of R.
> 
>       -thomas
> 
> 
> On Fri, 24 Jul 2009 ligges at statistik.tu-dortmund.de wrote:
> 
>> Ulrike,
>>
>> if you install from source, you always get the most recent version of
>> the package given it does not depend on a newer version of R.
>>
>> If you want a binary package, you also get the newest version - that was
>> newest at the time we stopped building binaries for that version of R.
>> We (or better I if we only talk about Windows, but similar for all other
>> platforms) cannot build for each R version any more. In that case we'd
>> have to build even 11 binary versions for Windows just for the R-2.x.y
>> series now. Binary repositories are fixed at some time (for Windows once
>> the first patchlevel release of the next R version is out, e.g. at the
>> time of the R-2.9.1 release the binary builds for R-2.8.x had been
>> stopped).
>>
>> So please upgrade your version of R or compile yourself from sources for
>> the R version you need the particular package for.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Uwe Ligges
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> groemping at bht-berlin.de wrote:
>>> Full_Name: Ulrike Groemping
>>> Version: 2.9.0 (and older)
>>> OS: Windows
>>> Submission from: (NULL) (84.190.173.190)
>>>
>>>
>>> When using an older version of R, packages are not found although they
>>> are
>>> available for newer versions of R and do work when installed with the
>>> old
>>> version. For example, installing DoE.base on R 2.8.1 installs version
>>> 0.2, while
>>> CRAN is at version 0.4-1 currently. It would be nice if the install
>>> process
>>> would per default look for the newest version of the package and install
>>> this
>>> one if its R-version request allows this. (I recently found a help list
>>> entry by
>>> Uwe Ligges that explains how to manually install from a repository for a
>>> newer
>>> CRAN version, but I did not bookmark it and cannot find it any more. The
>>> documentation does not enlighten me there.)
>>>
>>> Regards, Ulrike
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>
> 
> Thomas Lumley			Assoc. Professor, Biostatistics
> tlumley at u.washington.edu	University of Washington, Seattle
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> 
> 

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