I just installed R 2.12.1, and when I went to run a few old programs with it, nothing worked.
I got a ton of error messages saying such and such package was built before R 2.10.0 and needed to be reinstalled.

These were not just warning messages, but error messages that prevent the programs from running when
they were running just fine with R 2.10.1

For some of those packages, such as deSolve, I can't find any recent versions to download to correct the problem.

So my first question is, is there a way around this error that doesn't require actually installing recent versions of all those old packages?
I suppose I could just use R 2.10.1, but suppose at some point I want to use both an old package and a new package that was built
under R 2.12.1 in the same program? That has happened by the way. I wanted to use deSolve and yags. Since I don't have an old version of yags,
I had to install the current version on CRAN, and it won't work under 2.10.1.

My second question is, if not, should the R developers reconsider their strategic decision to invalidate packages just because they were built
under early versions of R?

I would be willing to bet that for many users, the improvements from R 2.10.1 to R 2.12.1 are minor compared with the hassle caused by the fact
that their old programs will no longer work.

This especially complicates application development, where the R programmer is not the end user.
What developer is going to use R for his applications if he can't even be sure they will work under future versions?



Joe Boyer
Principal Statistician
GSK Department of Statistical Sciences
8-275-3661
external: 610-787-3661


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