[R-sig-ME] lme4a versus lme4b

[Douglas Bates]

On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 8:24 AM, Kevin E. Thorpe
<kevin.thorpe at utoronto.ca> wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I decided to update my lme4a installation to play with it on my present
> analysis and noticed an lme4b package at r-forge.
>
> Apologies if I missed an announcement, but is lme4 development now
> in beta stage with lme4b being the beta version?  Is it the preferred
> development package to use now?

No.  What is in lme4b is an interim version that will never see the
light of day.  We kept it around for purposes of cross-checking
results but others should not be concerned about it.

I am currently at the useR!2010 conference where Uwe Ligges spoke this
morning on some of the challenges involved in maintaining CRAN,
especially the Windows binaries in his case.  The changes to lme4 in
lme4a, in particular the use of Rcpp constructions and classes in the
compiled code are somewhat problematic.  Dependence on Rcpp seems to
be associated with unexplained failures in some of the installation
and checking.  As a result it may take a bit longer than hoped to get
lme4a on CRAN.
>
> Kevin
>
> --
> Kevin E. Thorpe
> Biostatistician/Trialist, Knowledge Translation Program
> Assistant Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
> University of Toronto
> email: kevin.thorpe at utoronto.ca  Tel: 416.864.5776  Fax: 416.864.3016
>
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