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

[Pikounis, Bill]

Hi Andrew,

You mentioned:

> 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.

Actually, I think they do.  A quick perusal of the site indicated to me on
page 2 of the Overview Flyer
http://www.itp.phys.ethz.ch/econophysics/R/pdf/DocRmetrics.pdf:

"Why using MS Windows? In
the financial community Windows is the
mostly used operating system. For a broad
distribution and acceptance of Rmetrics, we
decided to develop the software under Windows
2000/XP. But nevertheless, since all
source code is available it may be straightforward
to adapt and compile the software
for other operating systems."

And right on the home page, I see

"The growing Rmetrics collection is based on many statistical and financial
functions which were contributed by myself, my students, or were ported from
other sources during the last few years. The work is by far not complete and
parts of the software are still untested, and may contain some bugs. "

It seems to me Dr Wuertz has done an awful lot already, and that "out of the
box" availability for Linux or other platforms will likely come as the
community of its users grows.

I found a folder in the Downloads section called

http://www.itp.phys.ethz.ch/econophysics/R/bin/windows/contrib/1.9/Sources/

and if I remember correctly, there are multiple Linux/Unix utilities out
there to handle "Windows" .zip files.

Finally I must say that this is the first time I can ever recall objections
about R or any *open source* software that was available on Windows but not
on Linux/Unix.  Of course the opposite direction case still occurs often
enough, I guess.

Best Regards,
Bill


> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Andrew Criswell
> Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2004 9:11 PM
> To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: Windows versus Unix packages in CRAN (Was Re: 
> [R] Rmetrics)
> 
> 
> 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.
> >
> >  
> >
> 
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