[R] fUtilities removed --> use fBasics

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net>
>>>>>     on Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:52:57 -0500 writes:

    > On Jan 13, 2012, at 12:33 PM, Dominic Comtois wrote:

    >> When setting up my new machine, I had the surprise to see
    >> that "Package 'fUtilities' was removed from the CRAN
    >> repository."
    >> 

    > https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/rmetrics-core/2012-January/000554.html
    > https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/rmetrics-core/2011-November/000549.html

indeed. thank you David (and Google, I presume ..)

    >> 
    >> This is problematic for my work. I use many of its
    >> functions, and it will complicate things a lot if other
    >> programmers want to use my previous code in the
    >> future. Plus, nowhere can I find the justification for
    >> its removal.

For a longer time, the Rmetrics "management" had planned to
deprecate  fUtilities (and fSeries and fCalendar),
basically refactoring the functionality ``approximately'' along
the lines of

 old package     replacement pkgs
 -----------     ----------------
 fUtilities      fBasics
 fSeries         timeSeries
 fCalendar       timeDate

but clearly not a 1:1 replacement, but a refactoring as said above.
fBasics, indeed 'Depends' on both timeSeries and timeDate,
so I think it is safe to say that you should replace

   fUtilities by fBasics
everywhere ... and things should work...

Yes, the communication about these plans where not put out the
way they should have; and indeed the deprecation would not have
necessarily meant that the package be dropped without proper notice.
One excuse has been the lack of resources and health on the side
of Rmetrics.

Disclaimer: I am one of Rmetrics-core at r-project.org, as having
been an active co-maintainer of some parts of the Rmetrics collection,
but I have not been part of the "management" nor the foundation.

Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich

    > You need to send your questions to the maintainers. They
    > apparently did not respond to the requests to fix the
    > errors.

    >> 
    >> Thanks for any info on this

    > You should perhaps subscribe to the list that is
    > established for discussion on this and related packages.

    > -- 

    > David Winsemius, MD West Hartford, CT

    > ______________________________________________
    > R-help at r-project.org mailing list
    > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do
    > read the posting guide
    > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide
    > commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.