[R-pkg-devel] Windows binary package not at mirrors

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 2024-06-23 5:44 a.m., Agner Fog wrote:
> On 23/06/2024 09.56, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>>
>> CRAN only builds Windows binaries for the devel version, the current
>> release, and the previous release, so nothing older than 4.3.0 will
>> get it.
>>
> Thank you. Updating R helped.
> 
> BTW, I don't think we need so many mirrors. They were needed only a long
> time ago when network bandwidth was much lower than it is today.

I think you are probably right, but they don't cost CRAN very much, and 
most of them don't cost the operators very much either.  One exception 
is the one run by Posit:  because it is cloud based, I think they spend 
quite a lot of money on it.  (I don't know the exact number, but I 
suspect it is in the tens of thousands of dollars per year.)

The fact that they spend so much on it means that it is very reliable, 
and it's the one I use almost all the time.  But it's also a 
vulnerability:  if Posit decided that they could better spend their 
money elsewhere, they could shut it down.  So I'm quite happy that there 
are a lot of other ones available.

Duncan Murdoch