[R] modifying code in contributed libraries - changes from versions 1.* to 2.*

[Prof Brian Ripley]

I didn't understand this either.  Perhaps Seth could explain it.  [I've 
added Seth back to the recipients.]

In particular, GPL requires the sources to be made available, and if the 
source package is not the sources, where are they made available?  So for 
a GPL-ed package it seems completely reasonable to contribute patches to 
the source package.

The only thing I can guess is that a very small number of packages are 
kept in some other form, e.g. to be pre-processed into R and S-PLUS 
variants or in some web-like form (in the sense of 'web' used for TeX, 
mixing code and documentation).  But the unequivocal statement

> it is not in the form used to develop the package

is false for e.g. the stats package and the VR bundle.


On Wed, 23 Nov 2005, Bjørn-Helge Mevik wrote:

> Seth Falcon wrote:
>
>> Actually, R source packages are also mangled.  While the source is
>> readable, it is not in the form used to develop the package.
>
> I haven't seen this behaviour.  At least for the simple package I'm
> maintaining (pls), the only file in the source package that is changed
> by R CMD build, is DESCRIPTION.  All .R and .Rd files are untouched
> (even the modification dates are unchanged).  (This is on a Linux
> system, I don't know how it works on MS/Mac.)

It's the same Perl code.

-- 
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