[R] Seeking Packaging advice

[Thomas Lumley]

On Tue, 26 Aug 2003, Ross Boylan wrote:

>
> 2) Modifications of existing packages.
> I modified the survival package (I'm not sure if that's properly called
> a "base" package, but it's close).  I know in this particular case, if
> I'm serious, I probably should contact the package maintainer.  But this
> kind of operation will probably be pretty common for me; I imagine many
> on this list have already done it.  In general, is the best thing to do
> a) package the new routines as a small additional package, with a
> dependence on the base package if necessary (the particular change I've
> made actually produces a few distinct files, slight tweaks of existing
> ones, that can stand on their own)

I think that's best

> b) package the new things in with the old under the same name as the old
> (obviously requires working with package maintainter)

The problem in this case is that the package maintainer is not the author.
Additional functionality might well be ok, but that could easily be done
with method (a).  Substantial changes to existing functions are going
cause problems when the next few thousand lines of diffs arrive from Mayo
Clinic.

> c) package the new things with the old and give it a new name.

Keeping this in sync is hard.

	-thomas