[R] Hunting for snow...

[Brian Lunergan]

Uwe Ligges wrote:
> Brian Lunergan wrote:
>> Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>>> On Sat, 8 Jul 2006, Brian Lunergan wrote:
>>>
>>>> Evening folks:
>>>>
>>>> I did an install.views of finance and econometrics and between the 
>>>> two of
>>>> them R reported 'FracSim', 'RDCOMClient', 'snow', 'VGAM', and 
>>>> 'segmented'
>>>> as missing dependencies. Now, I've managed to hunt down what appear 
>>>> to be
>>>> current zip file copies of all of the packages but 'snow'. Is there a
>>>> windows edition of the package out there someplace that will get 
>>>> along with
>>>> R v2.3.1 and if so, how do I find it?
>>>>
>>>> Please and thanks...
>>> PLEASE read the README:
>>>
>>> http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/2.3/@ReadMe
>>>
>>> and see the check summary at
>>>
>>> http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/checkSummaryWin.html
>>>
>>> snow runs distributed R tasks across hosts: it has three modes and
>>> prefers PVM and MPI if packages rpvm or Rmpi are available (which 
>>> they are not for Windows).  As a result only some of its 
>>> functionality can be used on Windows, and anyone who is going to get 
>>> involved at that level of programming will very easily install the 
>>> package from the sources.
>>>
>> Let me see if I understand this correctly. Something in the finance 
>> task view would seem to consider snow a dependency; however, the 
>> package in question has dragged it along for the ride into Windows, 
>> crippling its usefulness.
>>
>> Problem and a question. Having checked the file on the UofT CRAN 
>> mirror that lists dependencies for the available files snow only 
>> appears attached to three of them, none of which are listed as part 
>> the finance view or anything I already have on my system. What is R 
>> seeing these as a dependency for then? Perhaps the view maintainers 
>> can suggest something? If it is not available for windows and is only 
>> partially functional there can it be safely ignored as a dependency?
>>
>> One other puzzle resulting from this. The check summary suggested 
>> problems with 'FracSim', 'RDCOMClient', 'VGAM', and 'segmented' as 
>> windows packages but yet the versions I found seemed to install 
>> without complaint onto my 
> 
> Where did you find them? At least not in their current versions on the 
> official repository on CRAN master for R-2.3.x, I hope.

FracSim_0.2.zip
http://cran.stat.ucla.edu/bin/windows/contrib/2.3/

RDCOMClient_0.91-0.zip
http://www.omegahat.org/R/bin/windows/contrib/R-2.3.0/

segmented_0.1-4.zip
http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/2.1/

VGAM_0.6-9.zip
http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~yee/bin/windows/contrib/2.3/

These are the versions I found and the locations. Other than perhaps 
segmented all seem to be positioned as compatible with v2.3.x, but I own 
that I could be incorrect in my assessment of the situation.

>> system. Three gave back the successful unpack msg. VGAM did not, but 
>> several of the demo scripts ran without complaint so I am assuming it 
>> is comfortable with v2.3.1 on a windows system. Later versions of the 
>> four than were tested in the check summary, perhaps?
> 
> The check summary is recent. I can only imagine that you found earlier 
> versions...

-- 
Brian Lunergan
Nepean, Ontario
Canada


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