[R-sig-Debian] REvolution R sneaking inside Ubuntu ???

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 5 October 2009 at 09:52, Martin Maechler wrote:
| Read this on R-help,
| subject  "[R] Ubuntu, Revolutions, R".
| 
| I can hardly believe it's true and at the moment suspect
| that Andrew has a very unusual '/etc/apt/sources.list' or
| (an analogoue of that)
| 
| Any qualified comments, 
| Dirk Eddelbuettel, Vincent Goulet, ??

Please see the follow-up by David Smith on r-help.  

In short: Canonical and REvolution have cooperated to provide an enhanced R
version in the upcoming Ubuntu release due out at the end of October. It
offers both the Intel MKL (the fastest BLAS available thanks to extensive
code optimization and, where possible, multithreaded operations) and the
REvolution 'iterators', 'foreach', 'doMC', 'doSNOW' packages that make
parallel execution easier (either via Simon's multicore or via snow).

Nothing is taken away from R, and the only visible change is the message from
/etc/R/Rprofile.site which can be commented-out rather easily. It can also be
suppressed by using one ot the standard options --silent, --slave or --quiet.

As you asked: I have provided technical assistance via the packaging and the
integration into the Ubuntu release.  I have also tested this fairly
rigorously on amd64 and i386 machines.  Lastly, the 'R-for-Ubuntu-via-CRAN'
process that is handled by Vincent and Michael is completely separate from
this and continues to be a straight port of my Debian package.

If you have any questions, I'd be happy to take them off-line. I look forward
to your comments once your Ubuntu installation has upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10.

Regards, Dirk

 
| Martin
| 
| 
| >>>>> "AC" == Andrew Choens <andy.choens at gmail.com>
| >>>>>     on Sun, 4 Oct 2009 23:40:44 -0400 writes:
| 
|     AC> For those who don't follow Ubuntu development carefully,
|     AC> the first Beta for the next Ubuntu was recently
|     AC> released, so I took my home system and upgraded to help
|     AC> out with filing bugs, etc.
| 
|     AC> Just to be clear, I am not looking for help with the
|     AC> upgrade process. I've had R, and a few miscellaneous
|     AC> CRAN packages installed on this computer for years.
|     AC> Today, when I loaded an R session I had developed before
|     AC> the upgrade, I saw something new in my R "welcome
|     AC> message".
| 
|     >> 
|     >> R version 2.9.2 (2009-08-24)
|     >> Copyright (C) 2009 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
|     >> ISBN 3-900051-07-0
|     >> 
|     >> R is free software and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
|     >> You are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.
|     >> Type 'license()' or 'licence()' for distribution details.
|     >> 
|     >> R is a collaborative project with many contributors.
|     >> Type 'contributors()' for more information and
|     >> 'citation()' on how to cite R or R packages in publications.
|     >> 
|     >> 
|     >> This is REvolution R version 3.0.0:
|     >> the optimized distribution of R from REvolution Computing.
|     >> REvolution R enhancements Copyright (C) REvolution Computing, Inc.
|     >> 
|     >> Checking for REvolution MKL:
|     >> - REvolution R enhancements not installed.
|     >> For improved performance and other extensions: apt-get install revolution-r
| 
|     AC> The last part, about this being the "enhanced" version of R was . . . 
|     AC> unexpected.  I have heard of this company before and now I've spent some time 
|     AC> on their website. Looking at my installation, Ubuntu did not install any of 
|     AC> the REvolution Computing components, although R now basically thows a warning 
|     AC> every time I start it.
| 
|     AC> My question(s) for the community is this (pick any question(s) you like to 
|     AC> answer: 
|     AC>   Should I install the REvolution Computing packages? 
|     AC>   Do these packages really make R faster? 
|     AC>   Are these packages stable? 
|     AC>   What are your experiences with REvolution Computing software?
| 
|     AC> I am interested in hearing from members of the community, REvolution Computing 
|     AC> employees/supporters (although please ID yourself as such) and most anyone 
|     AC> else. I can see what they say on their website, but I'm interested in getting 
|     AC> other opinions too.
| 
|     AC> Thanks!
| 
|     AC> ______________________________________________
|     AC> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
|     AC> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
|     AC> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
|     AC> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
| 
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