On Tue, 2004-03-02 at 14:11, Globe Trotter wrote: > The best package of all (both in terms of features as well as cost), R, is > available for free, at www.r-project.org. Try it out: however, if you are > looking for a GUI-based package, you will be disappointed. > > R is similar to Splus which is available to purchase from www.insightful.com -- > however, it is far ahead and pretty much better in all respects, in my > considered opinion. I have both products and hardly use Splus anymore. > > On another note, I wonder why this is not included in Fedora. SuSE includes it, > perhaps because they are European. It's not a European vs U.S. issue. I have had prior discussions with Martyn Plummer, the RH/Fedora maintainer for R in the past (back during the FC1 Betas) regarding the possibility of submitting R for inclusion the in the Fedora Extras group. We have also discussed the possibility of creating a R "up2date/yum" compatible repository for FC on CRAN. I am unaware at this time where Martyn is leaning. Part of the issue is the large number of "add-on" packages for R, that are not only on CRAN, but on BioConductor and other R related repositories. Trying to standardize the various components across multiple locations and for multiple versions of RH/FC is a substantial undertaking at this point. Another consideration is that there has not been a pattern of making incremental patch releases of R available in a binary fashion. The source code is of course available and I usually update a couple of times per week via rsync. The typical pattern is for twice per year binary S/RPM updates with a 1.x.0 and 1.x.1 version pattern. R 1.9.0 will be released this Spring. R itself is evolving a repository like installation/updating function and there have been a variety of efforts amongst the Debian R users to coordinate and standardize the management of "base" R packages and add-ons. This has not been an easy task on their part, having been part of some of the exchanges. That all being said, I would defer to Martyn near term as to what his thoughts are at this point. I will drop him an e-mail to get some updates. HTH, Marc Schwartz
