[R] CDs for R?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:

> So I'd like to back Jari's proposal for an ISO image to be
> planted on CRAN as a separate file with its own unique URL.
> Exactly what its content should be may still be discussable,
> but I would be satisfied with full sources and documentation
> for R base and all contributed packages (maybe the Newsletter
> would also be handy).

You do realize that this would change at least daily?  So it really isn't 
something that one would want to be mirrored around the CRAN network.

Even for the sources it is tricky, as those of us who rsync part of CRAN 
know -- for example src/contrib does not contain all the current packages, 
the orphaned ones being links.  One would probably want recent R-patched 
and R-devel tarballs, and they are not actually on CRAN.

For binaries (and I suspect that most `customers' would want binaries)
it is trickier still, as to meet GPL some of the sources in the Archive 
area would need to be included (and we have not bothered to work out 
what).

I suggest a suitable first step is for some interested party to write a 
script to prepare such an ISO image and to put it (the image) up for 
comment (modern OSes can mount such an image, allowing browsing). I 
suspect it would be worth producing only say monthly.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595