Windows versus Unix packages in CRAN (Was Re: [R] Rmetrics)

[Andrew Criswell]

Yes, I agree with Ajay Shah's comments. The Rmetrics website makes a 
virtue of open source yet the Rmetrics people do not make available 
their package for the open source platform, Linux.

Ajay Shah wrote:

>>Rmetrics - New Version is available for R 1.9 !!
>>    
>>
>
>  
>
>>in R-binary and R-source form from the site "http://www.rmetrics.org",
>>and install the binary "zip" files in the usual way via the menu
>>    
>>
>
>I'm confused - does the fact that you are only distributing ".zip"
>files means that (shudder) I need Microsoft Windows in order to run
>this? (I hunted on the website but you seemed to only have .zip
>files. That's very odd; normally on Unix we don't ship .zip files).
>
>More generally: Do all R packages automatically run on Unix, or are we
>fragmenting the CRAN code base into Unix and non-Unix packages? One of
>my reasons for shifting to R was that it felt like a system that was
>built by Unix people (roots in Bell Labs etc.). So it will have a
>function like sink() as a nice counterpart to a function like source()
>:-)
>
>Ox, for example, has nice functionality but it felt like it was done
>by Windows guys, so it wasn't going to be useful to me, and I kept
>away.
>
>If R packages are actually in two (intersecting) sets : those that run
>on Unix and those that run on Windows, then do we need a CRAN/Unix and
>CRAN/M$ directories to distinguish them? It will avoid a lot of wasted
>time... e.g. I blew half an hour on investigating Rmetrics before
>deciding they're a Windows crowd.
>
>  
>