[R] R 2.6 Support Question

[Marc Schwartz]

On Apr 5, 2010, at 9:20 AM, Raadt, Timothy W. wrote:

> 
> Hello,
> 
> I have a question on the support of the R 2.6 software.  We are in the process of planning for a  hardware refresh and our new machines will be running Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8.   My question is if the R 2.6 software would be supported on a system running Windows 7 and Internet  Explorer 8?  Also, are you aware of any customers having issues with Windows 7 and/or  Internet Explorer 8?
> 
> Thank you for your time and any information you can provide.

See the R Windows FAQ, which is generally updated to reflect current versions of R:

  http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/rw-FAQ.html#Does-R-run-under-Windows-Vista_003f

That being said, R version 2.6.x is no longer supported from the perspective of bug fixes, patches and so forth. That version is now well over 2 years old, which is, in the R space-time continuum, ancient. The current release and the only actively supported version is 2.10.1.

If you want to get a sense of R's Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), please read Section 6 in:

  http://www.r-project.org/doc/R-FDA.pdf

While the above document is targeted to regulated clinical trials, the SDLC is explained in detail there. In brief, there is only one version of R that is formally supported at any given time and that is the current release version. 

>From the perspective of using the R e-mail lists for support, if you post a query and mention that you are using R version 2.6.x, the first thing that you will get back in reply is a rather direct series of messages telling you to update to the current release version of R before posting further inquiries.

You can also review the R Installation and Administration Manual:

  http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-admin.html

which is probably the first place that you should look relative to R running on particular platforms, Windows or otherwise.

Finally, you can search the e-mail list archives using either the built-in function RSiteSearch(), or one of the online search engines such as rseek.org. You will find myriad discussions on R and Windows 7, etc.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz