[R] Porting "unmaintained" packages to post R 2.10.0 era

[Ben Rhelp]

Hi Prof Brian,

Thank you for your email and for writing MASS. This book is brilliant.


----- Original Message ----
> From: Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk>
> To: Ben Rhelp <benrhelp at yahoo.co.uk>
> Cc: r-help at r-project.org
> Sent: Thu, 16 June, 2011 14:48:00
> Subject: Re: [R] Porting "unmaintained" packages to post R 2.10.0 era
> 
> On Thu, 16 Jun 2011, Mr Rhelp wrote:
> 
[...]
> 
> Sounds  like you are doing this on Windows (please do tell us!) and trying to 
>start with  a Windows binary package.
> 

Yes, sorry about that:
> version
               _                            
platform       x86_64-pc-mingw32            
arch           x86_64                       
os             mingw32                      
system         x86_64, mingw32              
status                                      
major          2                            
minor          13.0                         
year           2011                         
month          04                           
day            13                           
svn rev        55427                        
language       R                            
version.string R version 2.13.0 (2011-04-13)

[...]

> > Is there a HOWTO/porting  guide for packages pre R 2.10.0 to post R 2.10.0?
> 
> You don't need  one.  You start with the package sources, and install those.  
>If you  don't have the sources, you ask the author for the sources.  But on the  
>page you mention, I see
> 
> 'unix/macs use the  *.tar.gz  version'
> 
> by which they mean 'the source package'.
> 
> (Note that for  GPLed packages such as this one, the sources must be made  
>available.)
> 
> There are some errors in the format of the Rd files, but both  packages install 
>in R 2.13.0.  However, you are supposed to get Java  components from a site 
>which no longer exists, so I think you are going to need  to ask the author for 
>help.
> 
> One advantage of recent R is that to install  packages like these from the 
>sources you just need R, so there is no reason to  distribute Windows binary 
>packages (for such packages, with no C/C++/Fortran  code).
> 

Ok, my thinking was completely wrong. Your response help me to get things 
working. I have updated the packages to work with the latest version of the 
third party software (SoNIA) and I have contacted the original author with the 
aim to distribute some updated versions of the packages.
[...]

Thanks a lot again for your help.

Best regards,

Ben