[R] R "sumo" package suggestion

[Achim Zeileis]

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004 15:59:09 -0500 Liaw, Andy wrote:

> Good idea, IMHO, but there are some practical difficulties:
> 
> I guess the XEmacs packages are (most, if not all) pure elisp code,
> and do not need other stuff to work.  However, quite a few CRAN
> packages depend on external libraries or programs, and do not
> necessarily work on all platforms that R runs on.  How would such
> dependencies be resolved in such a kitchen sink bundle?
> 
> I have a somewhat related idea:  Start labelling packages with a set
> of pre-defined categories, and a package can be labelled with more
> than one categories (especially those *misc type packages).  It is
> then possible to have facility to let people install all packages that
> fall in a particular category (e.g., `spatial statistics').  I believe
> several systems have such facilities, Debian being one of them,
> TeXLive being another.

This is similar to idea that has been discussed from time to time for
several years now: it would be nice to have maintained "CRAN task views"
(or something like that), i.e., we could have a maintainer for, say
"spatial stats", another one for "machine learning", "biostats" which
can of course be overlapping. Then the maintainers would have to produce
some sort of list of packages (in a standardized format) with a little
bit of markup such that a web page can be generated from it and that the
information could be used by install.packages().
I think most users would profit from that, but nobody has done the work
to provide the infrastructure so far. I've just discussed this with Kurt
again, a week ago or so...I wanted to play around with some ideas, but
didn't get round to really do something yet. But hopefully, I'll get
round to work on this in the next weeks.
Z

> Just my $0.02...
> 
> Andy
> 
> > From: Rodney Sparapani
> > 
> > r-help:
> > 
> > I have an R package suggestion.  After spending
> > several hours the other day installing about a dozen
> > packages, I had an idea.  In xemacs, there is a
> > "sumo" package which allows me to install a large
> > bundle of xemacs packages at one time (about a 120
> > modes including ESS).  I think R should have a 
> > similar bundle.  It would be so much easier than
> > hunting/downloading/installing.  Martin encouraged 
> > me to send this suggestion to r-help.  In addition, 
> > he put together a few comments relating to the previous 
> > times that this, or a similar suggestion, has been 
> > brought up here.
> > 
> > Martin wrote:
> > 
> > If you search for "install all CRAN packages"
> > on
> > 	http://maths.newcastle.edu.au/~rking/R/
> > 
> > (the URL which is quickly found from the [Search] sidebar of
> > http://www.R-project.org/) 
> > 
> > You find things like Greg Warnes 'Makefile'    
> > http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/help/04/04/0723.html
> > and
> > http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/help/04/04/0616.html
> > which is from Tony and has the following small function:
> > 
> >   installNewCRANPackages <- function() {
> >     ## (C) A.J. Rossini, 2002--2004
> >     test2 <- packageStatus()$avail["Status"]
> >     
> > install.packages(row.names(test2)[which(test2$Status=="not 
> > installed")])
> >   }
> > 
> > ----------
> > 
> > Rodney Sparapani              Medical College of Wisconsin
> > Sr. Biostatistician           Patient Care & Outcomes Research
> > rsparapa at mcw.edu              http://www.mcw.edu/pcor
> > Was 'Name That Tune' rigged?  WWLD -- What Would Lombardi Do
> > 
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> >
> 
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