Dear R-users,
from Douglas Bates lme4 book I'm trying to run profile() on a quite large
dataset, in order to have some confidence intervals on random effects
parameter in mixed models. When I run it in lme4 however I'm faced with the
following error:

Errore in UseMethod("profile") :
  no applicable method for 'profile' applied to an object of class "mer"

Surfing on R-help mailing lists I understood that this has to do with some
compatibility problems which are undergoing development for next version of
the lme4 package, right? Also, I found that this function is active in the
development packages lme4a and lme4b, available from R-forge...

I was trying to install these packages, at least to have profile() running.
I've tried different ways for doing this but I'm stuck in a blind
alley...I've tried the following (all suggestions from R users found on the
Internet):

- install.packages("lme4a", repos="http://R-Forge.R-project.org")

returning  "Warning message:
In getDependencies(pkgs, dependencies, available, lib) :
  package ‘lme4a’ is not available"

- installing binary file directly in the .libpaths directory, but: lme4a
binary for MAC can not be retrieved on the web (page not found), and lme4b
gives similar problem.

Now only installing package from source files remain, but this does not seem
so easy...at least not for me!
I have a Macbook Pro (running Mac OS/X 10.6.4 with Leopard)...

Any help is appreciated, since previous talks on R mailing list kind of
confused me much!!

thanx in advance
niccolò

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