[Rd] Offer zip builds

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> Iñaki Ucar 
>>>>>     on Tue, 4 Jun 2019 18:06:34 +0200 writes:

    > FWIW, innoextract extracts the contents of the installer just fine.

    > Iñaki

Thank you, Iñaki

For me too.  On the Windows server (I almost only use for testing R and
ESS), I've always been happy I could install *several* versions
of R (and use them easily simultaneously with ESS in the same
emacs instance running).

Maybe the R project is rather the example the other projects should take:
It costs much less maintainer time (including documenting,
helping users to solve problems, ... da da da) to provide it in this
one form which *does* provide the flexibility of installing
anywhere on your computer and *is* based on FOSS.

    > On Tue, 4 Jun 2019 at 17:40, Steven Penny <svnpenn using gmail.com> wrote:
    >> 
    >> On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 6:54 PM Marc Schwartz wrote:
    >> > I am on macOS primarily, albeit, I have run both Windows and Linux routinely
    >> > in years past.
    >> 
    >> With all due respect, then you have no business in this thread.
    >> 
    >> > That being said, these days, I do run Windows 10 under a Parallels VM on
    >> > macOS, as I have a single commercial application that I need to run for
    >> > clients now and then, and it sadly only runs on a real Windows install (e.g.
    >> > not with Wine).
    >> 
    >> Further demonstrating my point. You run Windows in a virtual machine, meaning
    >> even if you encountered some bad installer, you could just revert to a snapshot
    >> or similar.
    >> 
    >> > To your points:
    >> >
    >> > [bunch of links]
    >> 
    >> I am sorry if I miscommunicated, I didnt and dont wish to be convinced about how
    >> well behaved R installer is. 
    >> I wish for R to offer zip builds.

Are you volunteering to do this for every release? .. on an
ongoing basis ..  unpaid ?

To mention examples of BIG BIG company products such as Microsoft
or Google (below) is really ridiculous.
They have lots of money to spend and pay many many work hours to
pay.

We don't want to:  Given such (and potentially many more similar) e-mail
threads plus the issues mentioned above (plus Virus scanners,
plus broken file transfers less easily detected than with an
*.exe, plus ...),
this is mainly a big time sink with an epsilon benefit.

As Duncan Murdoch explained nicel, you may do it.

Martin Maechler
ETH Zurich and R Core Team



    >> Many other programming languages do:
    >> 
    >> - http://strawberryperl.com/releases.html
    >> - https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet-core/2.2
    >> - https://golang.org/dl
    >> - https://nim-lang.org/install_windows.html
    >> - https://python.org/downloads/release/python-373
    >> - https://windows.php.net/download
    >> 
    >> As I see it, the question isnt "should R offer zip builds", its "why isnt R
    >> offering zip builds".
    >> 
    >> > Unless you can make the case to them to expend the finite resources that they
    >> > have to support this as part of each version release process, in light of the
    >> > prior discussions, it is not clear that this appears to be a priority.
    >> 
    >> Thats the point of my original post. If they choose to continue with only EXE,
    >> I will just keep using other programming languages. So you could see how it
    >> might be in R interest to offer this, as no zip builds might be one of the
    >> reasons people avoid the language.
    >> 
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    > -- 
    > Iñaki Úcar

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