neue Rmetrics packages

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

Diethelm,

Thanks for the reply.  Let me prefix my follow-up by stressing that I am
wearing two hats here, and that can be confusing

a) as someone interested in seeing Rmetrics prosper:  I think the new
packages are the right idea, as I had hinted earlier when we were about to
set up the list.

b) as the acting Debian maintainer for the bundle, I am unhappy about the
changes and the lack of a simple heads-up.  When I add new packages to
Debian, it takes two to three weeks for them to be approved and available.
So only telling me on release date that 'foo, bar and bling are now needed'
is suboptimal as I could have used that information three weeks prior ...

That said, the rest of the mail will be with the Debian hat:

| Is somebody around who can interface the interpolation functions from 
| the GNU scientific library to R? 

Okay, I volunteer to do this. I have been the Debian maintainer for the GSL
and know bits of the code base, and I also successfully ported code out of
the GSL into RDieharder.  So let's work on this together and take the threat
off-line:  can you help me with pointers about what calls Rmetrics makes to
akima, what GSL functions you had in mind etc pp?

That way we get rid of akima.

| There is another problem with the package fPortfolio. It uses currently the
| nonlinear solver with nonlinear constraints Rdonlp2 - it comes as a builtin
| with the package.
| 
| http://arumat.net/Rdonlp2/
| 
| I think this has also to be replaced by another GNU or GNU like licensed 
| solver. A possible candidate may be
| 
| http://www.coin-or.org/Bonmin/Intro/index.html

That is harder.

| Another question - is there a reason why robustbase is not part of Debian ?

Lack of manpower?  But I agree -- I will add RUnit and robustbase to
Debian. Both are 'good to have'.

That leaves two more:  sn, and the mnormt package that sn depends upon.
Could we possibly alter Rmetrics to make this a run-time test and a Suggests
rather than a Depends?

Dirk

-- 
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.