[Rd] Standardizing included packages

[peter dalgaard]

On Dec 1, 2011, at 01:56 , Gabor Grothendieck wrote:

> It seems that R is mostly distributed with the tcltk package but not always.
> 
> Is there some reason for this inconsistency?

Well, the tcltk package as such is part of the _source_ distribution of R.

We have no centralized control over what binary distributors might build it against (except OSX and Windows because that is handled by members of the Core Team).

AFAIK, Linux binary distributors usually build against the Tcl/Tk for binary packages. Otherwise, you need to talk to the maintainers. However, there's also the issue of whether Tcl/Tk should be dependencies of R, and whether all R packages appear in one "R" binary package; some distributions like to allow a more modular approach.

It is only on Windows that we ship with our own builds of various libraries. In principle, they are 3rd party products, and especially on Linux, they should really be considered parts of the OS. "Good citizen" software should use what is there and not override system libraries without very good cause. On OSX, the situation is somewhere in between, and the strategy has been to make Tcl/Tk available for download along with the R binaries.


> 
> It would be nice if one could count on those packages that are
> distributed on the Windows version of R being distributed on all other
> platforms too.
> 
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