[Rd] Package development process?

[Spencer Graves]

Hello, All:


       What thoughts might you have on "The R Software Package 
Development Process"?


       I'm looking for ideas, materials, references, and / or 
collaborators for an article on this topic to be submitted to the 
Communications of the ACM.  My limited experience with other languages 
such as Matlab and Python suggests that R may be fairly unique with CRAN 
and this accompanying package development process -- and users of other 
languages might benefit from emulating R in this regard.  We have an 
immediate deadline of Sept. 15, when Sundar and I are scheduled to speak 
on this topic for the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Association for 
Computing Machinery.


       So far my literature search for comparable capabilities for other 
languages have produced essentially nothing comparable.(a)  Sundar and I 
added a section on "Selected Repositories" to the Wikipedia "Software 
repository" entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_repository).


       Thanks,
       Spencer Graves

##################
(a) I have material discussed by Merijn de Jonge, Eindhoven University 
of Technology on "Package-Based Software Development" at the 29th 
Euromicro Conference (EUROMICRO'03),
Belek-Antalya, Turkey, September 01-September 06 
(http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/EURMIC.2003.1231570).  
I'm also familiar with material by Friedrich Leisch, Sundar and I on 
"Creating R Packages" available as contributed documentation from CRAN.

-- 
Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
President and Chief Operating Officer
Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
751 Emerson Ct.
San José, CA 95126
ph:  408-655-4567