[R] R on Linux, and R on Windows , any difference in maturity+stability?

Bert Gunter gunter.berton at gene.com
Tue Oct 6 22:23:59 CEST 2009


Folks:

1. No blame implied to anyone.

However, as 64 bit Windows/R build is apparently not available except as a
commercial product, may I suggest that henceforth it should not be discussed
in this list and that any queries about it simply be directed to David Smith
at Revolution. It just doesn't "feel" right to me to have these sorts of
discussions here. I know that no commercialism was intended, but it still
seems to me be oozing in.


Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics

 
 -----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On
Behalf Of David M Smith
Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 11:57 AM
To: Jose Quesada
Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: Re: [R] R on Linux, and R on Windows ,any difference in
maturity+stability?

I wanted to correct a couple of misconceptions raised in Jose's post
below, which I'll take the liberty of addressing out of order.

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 7:34 AM, Jose Quesada <Quesada at gmail.com> wrote:
> While revolution has
> provided very nice packages to the community (e.g., foreach), the win-64
port as
> of today is certainly the worst platform to do work on. Reasons:

> (1) it's R 2.7.2

That's true, however REvolution R Enterprise based on R 2.9.2 is in
beta testing right now. Creating a distribution of R under validated
build processes adds a lot of extra process, testing, and overhead,
and for this and other reasons our subscription "Enterprise"
distributions don't track R version-to-version. Our free,
community-based REvolution R distributions will track R much more
closely beginning with 2.9.2.

> (4) There's a proprietary repository, where most packages are outrageously
> outdated.

As a service to our users using REvolution R Enterprise we provide
64-bit Windows binary builds of as many R packages on CRAN as possible
(see below). This is helpful to many of our users, because the tools
to build binary packages for R on 64-bit Windows are not widely
available. (Unfortunately, no free compiler is capable of building R
for 64-bit Windows today. Believe me, we and many others have tried.)
CRAN does not support Windows 64-bit binary packages, so we must
provide a repository separate from CRAN (and our own CRAN mirror) for
this purpose. But calling it a "proprietary repository" misleads --
all those packages are and remain free under the terms of their
respective licenses (GPL and others). The packages are all compatible
with R 2.7.2, which is currently the only 64-bit Windows version of R
available.

> (2) Many important packages will never be ported

Some clarification is in order here. A number of packages on CRAN are
not self-contained; some rely on third-party software or systems not
part of R itself. For example, RGtk2 depends on the gtk+ software,
which is only available in experimental form on the Windows 64-bit
platform. This, obviously, has ramifications for the packages that
they depend on.

In some cases our support team has gone above and beyond for
subscription customers to port third-party applications (for example,
we ported the independent GraphViz software to 64-bit Windows to make
RGraphViz from BioConductor work), but for obvious reasons this can
only be done on a case-by-case basis.

> (3) Some packages (particularly those depending on Rjava) would not work
properly.

See (2) above: as a contributed package, rJava is dependent on
Windows' support for Java on the 64-bit platform. Some have noted that
Microsoft's love for Java is less than legendary.

> (5) Most help you find on R-help will not apply. Instead, you have 'paid'
> support. Said support is slow, and close to useless in most cases.

Jose is entitled to his opinion, but the live technical support
provided by our team is a major feature of our subscription-based
distributions - it is indeed what you pay for. We have many customers
from commercial institutions large and small, on Windows 64-bit and
other platforms, who have found great value in the responsiveness and
expertise of our support services. As I've noted above, in many cases
they go beyond the call of duty to deal with issues inherent to the
Windows 64-bit operating system. Unfortunately, platform-specific
issues are sometimes beyond our control, despite best efforts.

> (6) Packages that rely on external tools (e.g., mysql) will take a lot of
work
> to get going.

This is true of many software packages for 64-bit Windows including
mysql. Unfortunately, the lack of good free compilers for the Windows
64-bit platform means that some open-source projects in particular are
not readily available for 64-bit Windows (a situation we at REvolution
Computing seek to remedy for R).

> And of course, one have to pay for a yearly license, to have the privilege
to
> work under the above conditions.

As Heinlein wrote, TANSTAAFL. The feedback we've had is that support
for R is particularly beneficial on the 64-bit Windows platform, for
exactly the reasons Jose raises above.

> Note: this may change any time, since they are working on a continuous
build
> that will keep the releases in sync with mainstream R.

That's also true. We have been working on an automated build system
for R and R packages. It will first be used for the Ubuntu release,
but it's designed as a multiplatform system. It will allow us to keep
our free community releases in sync with CRAN R, and keep packages we
build up-to-date.

In summary: I thank Jose for raising some important points to consider
if you have the freedom to choose any platform and you need the
additional memory capacity of a 64-bit version of R. But if you need
to use 64-bit Windows and want to use R, the supported distribution
REvolution R Enterprise has worked very well for many users.

# David Smith

-- 
David M Smith <david at revolution-computing.com>
Director of Community, REvolution Computing www.revolution-computing.com
Tel: +1 (206) 577-4778 x3203 (San Francisco, USA)

Check out our upcoming events schedule at
www.revolution-computing.com/events

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