[R-sig-QA] Validation of an R installation

[A.J. Rossini]

Following up on my own post, here is an internal response from Andreas
Krause (of Krause & Olson fame), our local reluctant expert on
validation.   Please don't hold it against him, I was going to
threaten access to the expresso machine if he didn't comment :-).

> Tony,
>
>this list looks good. Going by my experiences so far,
>
>the validate() function in Splus is really useful
>and so is the white paper that Insightful released on their quality
>assurance policy and techniques.
>That's the major emphasis.
>
>Then there is typically a vendor audit (actually including a visit to the
>vendor), and here I'm not clear what that might mean for R.
>I have actually suggested to Insightful that they become some sort of Red
>Hat or SuSe for R, and they seem to have discussed it.
>I would put that question forward to the group. Elvis Miller (XLS
>solutions, isn't it?) might be interested, too.
>Maybe Ueli can comment on what people actually do during a vendor audit
>visit.
>
>Finally, a validation needs to take place for every new version, and
>that's a pain given R's fairly frequent updates (compared to S-Plus and
>SAS at least). Another point of discussion (POD).
>
>If we sort these points out, we should be very close to making it come
>true.


best,
-tony

"Commit early,commit often, and commit in a repository from which we can easily
roll-back your mistakes" (AJR, 4Jan05).

A.J. Rossini
blindglobe at gmail.com