[Rd] The case for freezing CRAN

[Kevin Coombes]

On 3/20/2014 9:00 AM, Therneau, Terry M., Ph.D. wrote:
>
>
> On 03/20/2014 07:48 AM, Michael Weylandt wrote:
>> On Mar 20, 2014, at 8:19, "Therneau, Terry M., Ph.D." 
>> <therneau at mayo.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> There is a central assertion to this argument that I don't follow:
>>>
>>>> At the end of the day most published results obtained with R just 
>>>> won't be reproducible.
>>>
>>> This is a very strong assertion. What is the evidence for it?
>>
>> If I've understood Jeroen correctly, his point might be alternatively 
>> phrased as "won't be reproducED" (i.e., end user difficulties, not 
>> software availability).
>>
>> Michael
>>
>
> That was my point as well.  Of the 30+ Sweave documents that I've 
> produced I can't think of one that will change its output with a new 
> version of R.  My 0/30 estimate is at odds with the "nearly all" 
> assertion.  Perhaps I only do dull things?
>
> Terry T.
>
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The only concrete example that comes to mind from my own Sweave reports 
was actually caused by BioConductor and not CRAN. I had a set of 
analyses that used DNAcopy, and the results changed substantially with a 
new release of the package in which they changed the default values to 
the main function call.   As a result, I've taken to writing out more of 
the defaults that I previously just accepted.  There have been a few 
minor issues similar to this one (with changes to parts of the Mclust 
package ??). So my estimates are somewhat higher than 0/30 but are still 
a long way from "almost all".

Kevin