[Rd] Rtools questions

[Gabor Grothendieck]

On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 8:58 PM, Spencer Graves
<spencer.graves at prodsyse.com> wrote:
> On 4/5/2011 5:01 PM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 7:51 PM, Henrik Bengtsson<hb at biostat.ucsf.edu>
>>  wrote:
>>>
>>> On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 3:44 PM, Duncan Murdoch<murdoch.duncan at gmail.com>
>>>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 11-04-05 6:22 PM, Spencer Graves wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hello:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>        1.  How can I tell when the development version of Rtools has
>>>>> changed?
>>>>
>>>> I don't make announcements of the changes, you just need to check the
>>>> web
>>>> site.  There are online tools that can do this for you automatically,
>>>> but I
>>>> don't know which one to recommend.  Google suggests lots of them.
>>>
>>> I also asked myself this before and I must admit it took me a while to
>>> interpret the contents of the webpage.  There are multiple sections,
>>> e.g. 'Changes since R 2.12.2', 'Changes since R 2.11.1', 'Changes
>>> since R 2.11.0', and so on.  Then within each section there are some
>>> dates mentioned.  Given my current R version (say R 2.13.0 beta) and
>>> Rtools (Rtools213.exe), it not fully clear to me which section to look
>>> at, e.g. 'Changes since R 2.12.2'?  It might be more clear if there
>>> instead the sections would be 'Changes in Rtools213', 'Changes in
>>> Rtools212' and so on, and within each maybe list updates by
>>> dates/version.  More like a NEWS file.  Then it would be easier to see
>>> if there is an updated available or not.  Even a NEWS file only
>>> available as part of the installation will help decide whether the
>>> version you have installed differ from the one available online.
>>> Something like the following:
>>>
>>> == Changes in Rtools213 ==
>>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>>
>>> == Changes in Rtools212 ==
>>>
>>> 2011-03-25:
>>> - Rtools 2.12 has been frozen.
>>> - We have updated all of the tools to current Cygwin versions as of
>>> March 25, 2011. We added the "du" utility from Cygwin. We have dropped
>>> Vanilla Perl. The libjpeg version has been updated to 8c, and libpng
>>> has been updated to 1.5.1.
>>>
>>> 2010-10-18: [v2.12.0.1892]<== Is this an Rtools version?!?
>>> - Prior to October 18, 2010, builds of Rtools212.exe did not correctly
>>> install the "extras" required to build R. Version 2.12.0.1892 or later
>>> should fix this.
>>> - We have now updated all of the tools to current Cygwin versions, and
>>> have updated the compilers, and included the 64 bit compilers into
>>> Rtools. See Prof. Ripley's page for the details.
>>> - Perl is rarely needed in R since R 2.12.0, so it is by default not
>>> installed.
>>>
>>> 2010-??-??:
>>> - The 32 bit version of R-devel (to become R 2.12.0 in fall, 2010)
>>> will be built with gcc 4.5.x, so Rtools212 contains a completely new
>>> MinGW toolchain based on gcc 4.5.0.
>>>
>>> == Changes in Rtools211 ==
>>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>>
>>> Just a suggestion ...and thanks for providing Rtools!
>>>
>>> /Henrik
>>
>> If a NEWS file were included in the Rtools distribution itself (and
>> not just on the web site) it would be helpful since its not always
>> clear which version you have on your system in the first place.
>
>      However, adding a NEWS file increases the labor, and I'd be happy
> letting Duncan and others continue doing what they do without asking them to
> take the time to tell the rest of us what they did.
>
>
>      Something simpler would suffice for my needs, e.g., a revision number

That wouldn't let you know what version has been installed after installation.

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