[R] R "sumo" package suggestion
Philippe Grosjean
phgrosjean at sciviews.org
Fri Nov 12 10:48:04 CET 2004
Hello,
I think Achim suggestion is more realistic: it does not imply automatic
installation of all packages, but just a restricted list of packages
available on CRAN about a specific topic.
An easy way to get this result is to propose separate lists of packages. It
means separate lists than
http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/PACKAGES.html (and 'PACKAGES' in the
Windows packages binaries). I don't see the problem to propose other lists
that could be called 'SpatialStats.html' (in packages
sources)/'SpatialStats' (in Windows binaries)... and the same for
'MachineLearning', 'Biostats', etc...
Then, of course the various functions that install packages should be
adapted to use these lists. It does not look like an unsurmontable task.
Of course, if this is not done yet by the R Core Team, I presume that there
must be difficulties that I don't see. It is obvious that, either we need a
list maintainer for each topic, or we have to propose keywords for packages
(similar to the keywords for functions) that will be used to automatically
generate those separate lists.
An alternative that can currently be used for groups of users in an
institution is to maintain a local copy of R packages repository, which
contains only the packages of interest for this group. I do so for my
students. Under Windows, in the new R 2.0.1 beta, there is a new menu entry
in packages -> Set CRAN mirror... (in my version it does not work yet,
looking for a missing .\doc\CRAN_mirrors.csv file), but I can easily figure
out how it works and how I could append my own repository to the list to
ease installation of a restricted list of R packages by my students. This is
only for Windows, but a similar approach can also be used on other platforms
with a little bit of coding.
Best,
Philippe
..............................................<°}))><........
) ) ) ) )
( ( ( ( ( Prof. Philippe Grosjean
) ) ) ) )
( ( ( ( ( Numerical Ecology of Aquatic Systems
) ) ) ) ) Mons-Hainaut University, Pentagone
( ( ( ( ( Academie Universitaire Wallonie-Bruxelles
) ) ) ) ) 6, av du Champ de Mars, 7000 Mons, Belgium
( ( ( ( (
) ) ) ) ) phone: + 32.65.37.34.97, fax: + 32.65.37.33.12
( ( ( ( ( email: Philippe.Grosjean at umh.ac.be
) ) ) ) )
( ( ( ( ( web: http://www.umh.ac.be/~econum
) ) ) ) )
..............................................................
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Achim Zeileis
> Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2004 10:21 PM
> To: Liaw, Andy
> Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch; rsparapa at post.its.mcw.edu
> Subject: Re: [R] R "sumo" package suggestion
>
> On Thu, 11 Nov 2004 15:59:09 -0500 Liaw, Andy wrote:
>
> > Good idea, IMHO, but there are some practical difficulties:
> >
> > I guess the XEmacs packages are (most, if not all) pure elisp code,
> > and do not need other stuff to work. However, quite a few CRAN
> > packages depend on external libraries or programs, and do not
> > necessarily work on all platforms that R runs on. How would such
> > dependencies be resolved in such a kitchen sink bundle?
> >
> > I have a somewhat related idea: Start labelling packages
> with a set
> > of pre-defined categories, and a package can be labelled with more
> > than one categories (especially those *misc type packages). It is
> > then possible to have facility to let people install all
> packages that
> > fall in a particular category (e.g., `spatial statistics').
> I believe
> > several systems have such facilities, Debian being one of them,
> > TeXLive being another.
>
> This is similar to idea that has been discussed from time to
> time for several years now: it would be nice to have
> maintained "CRAN task views"
> (or something like that), i.e., we could have a maintainer
> for, say "spatial stats", another one for "machine learning",
> "biostats" which can of course be overlapping. Then the
> maintainers would have to produce some sort of list of
> packages (in a standardized format) with a little bit of
> markup such that a web page can be generated from it and that
> the information could be used by install.packages().
> I think most users would profit from that, but nobody has
> done the work to provide the infrastructure so far. I've just
> discussed this with Kurt again, a week ago or so...I wanted
> to play around with some ideas, but didn't get round to
> really do something yet. But hopefully, I'll get round to
> work on this in the next weeks.
> Z
>
> > Just my $0.02...
> >
> > Andy
> >
> > > From: Rodney Sparapani
> > >
> > > r-help:
> > >
> > > I have an R package suggestion. After spending several hours the
> > > other day installing about a dozen packages, I had an idea. In
> > > xemacs, there is a "sumo" package which allows me to
> install a large
> > > bundle of xemacs packages at one time (about a 120 modes
> including
> > > ESS). I think R should have a similar bundle. It would
> be so much
> > > easier than hunting/downloading/installing. Martin
> encouraged me to
> > > send this suggestion to r-help. In addition, he put
> together a few
> > > comments relating to the previous times that this, or a similar
> > > suggestion, has been brought up here.
> > >
> > > Martin wrote:
> > >
> > > If you search for "install all CRAN packages"
> > > on
> > > http://maths.newcastle.edu.au/~rking/R/
> > >
> > > (the URL which is quickly found from the [Search] sidebar of
> > > http://www.R-project.org/)
> > >
> > > You find things like Greg Warnes 'Makefile'
> > > http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/help/04/04/0723.html
> > > and
> > > http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/help/04/04/0616.html
> > > which is from Tony and has the following small function:
> > >
> > > installNewCRANPackages <- function() {
> > > ## (C) A.J. Rossini, 2002--2004
> > > test2 <- packageStatus()$avail["Status"]
> > >
> > > install.packages(row.names(test2)[which(test2$Status=="not
> > > installed")])
> > > }
> > >
> > > ----------
> > >
> > > Rodney Sparapani Medical College of Wisconsin
> > > Sr. Biostatistician Patient Care & Outcomes Research
> > > rsparapa at mcw.edu http://www.mcw.edu/pcor
> > > Was 'Name That Tune' rigged? WWLD -- What Would Lombardi Do
> > >
> > > ______________________________________________
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> > > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > > PLEASE do read the posting guide!
> > > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> > >
> > >
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
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> >
>
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