The build system rolled up R-2.15.3.tar.gz (codename "Security
Blanket") at 9:00 this morning. This is intended to be the final round-up
release of the 2.15 series, and in fact of the entire 2.x.y series which started
2004-10-04.
The list below details the changes in this release.
You can get the source code from
  http://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-2/R-2.15.3.tar.gz
or wait for it to be mirrored at a CRAN site nearer to you.
Binaries for various platforms will appear in due course.
For the R Core Team
Peter Dalgaard
These are the md5sums for the freshly created files, in case you wish
to check that they are uncorrupted:
MD5 (AUTHORS) = cbf6da8f886ccd8d0dda0cc7ffd1b8ec
MD5 (COPYING) = eb723b61539feef013de476e68b5c50a
MD5 (COPYING.LIB) = a6f89e2100d9b6cdffcea4f398e37343
MD5 (FAQ) = c82ec3aa971272312ca6f3f28c58d329
MD5 (INSTALL) = 37adac6d0fbadf25b5a40e3f7535415e
MD5 (NEWS) = 09e5c175b09d33e28023c655a11e9b8d
MD5 (NEWS.html) = c7dccfe18e943427b85e9ddd1c7ba46b
MD5 (ONEWS) = 0c3e10eef74439786e5fceddd06dac71
MD5 (OONEWS) = b0d650eba25fc5664980528c147a20db
MD5 (R-latest.tar.gz) = b2f1a5d701f1f90679be0c60e1931a5c
MD5 (README) = 296871fcf14f49787910c57b92655c76
MD5 (RESOURCES) = c7cb32499ebbf85deb064aab282f93a4
MD5 (THANKS) = 7a87321ccf0ecd2bece697e39dce5e67
MD5 (R-2/R-2.15.3.tar.gz) = b2f1a5d701f1f90679be0c60e1931a5c
This is the relevant part of the NEWS file 
CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.15.3:
  NEW FEATURES:
    o lgamma(x) for very small x (in the denormalized range) is no
      longer Inf with a warning.
    o image() now sorts an unsorted breaks vector, with a warning.
    o The internal methods for tar() and untar() do a slightly more
      general job for 'ustar'-style handling of paths of more than 100
      bytes.
    o Packages compiler and parallel have been added to the reference
      index (refman.pdf).
    o untar(tar = "internal") has some support for pax headers as
      produced by e.g. gnutar --posix (which seems prevalent on
      OpenSUSE 12.2) or bsdtar --format pax, including long path and
      link names.
    o sQuote() and dQuote() now handle 0-length inputs.  (Suggestion of
      Ben Bolker.)
    o summaryRprof() returns zero-row data frames rather than throw an
      error if no events are recorded, for consistency.
    o The included version of PCRE has been updated to 8.32.
    o The tcltk namespace can now be re-loaded after unloading.
      The Tcl/Tk event loop is inhibited in a forked child from package
      parallel (as in e.g. mclapply()).
    o parallel::makeCluster() recognizes the value random for the
      environment variable R_PARALLEL_PORT: this chooses a random value
      for the port and reduces the chance of conflicts when multiple
      users start a cluster at the same time.
  UTILITIES:
    o The default for TAR on Windows for R CMD build has been changed
      to be internal if no tar command is on the path.
      This enables most packages to be built 'out of the box' without
      Rtools: the main exceptions are those which need to be installed
      to re-build vignettes and need Rtools for installation (usually
      because they contain compiled code).
  C-LEVEL FACILITIES:
    o On a 64-bit Windows platform with enough RAM, R_alloc can now
      allocate up to just under 32GB like other 64-bit platforms.
  DEPRECATED AND DEFUNCT:
    o Use of col2rgb(0) is deprecated (see the help page for its
      limitations).
    o The deprecated intensities component returned by hist() is no
      longer recognized by the plot() method and will be removed in R
      3.0.0.
    o real(), as.real() and is.real() are now formally deprecated and
      give a warning.
    o This is formal notice that the non-API EISPACK entry points in R
      will be removed shortly.
  INSTALLATION:
    o The configure tests for Objective C and Objective C++ now work on
      Mac OS 10.8 with Xcode 4.5.2 (PR#15107).
    o The cairo-based versions of X11() now work with current versions
      of cairographics (e.g. 1.12.10).  (PR#15168)
      A workaround for earlier versions of R is to use X11.options(type
      = "nbcairo").
    o Configuration and R CMD javareconf now come up with a smaller set
      of library paths for Java on Oracle-format JDK (including
      OpenJDK).  This helps avoid conflicts between libraries (such as
      libjpeg) supplied in the JDK and system libraries.  This can
      always be overridden if needed: see the 'R Installation and
      Administration' manual.
  BUG FIXES:
    o beta(a, b) could overflow to infinity in its calculations when
      one of a and b was less than one.  (PR#15075)
    o lbeta(a, b) no longer gives NaN if a or b is very small (in the
      denormalized range).
    o bquote() is now able to substitute default arguments in
      single-argument functions.  (PR#15077)
    o browseEnv(html = FALSE) would segfault if called from R (not
      R.app) on a CRAN-style Mac OS X build of R.
    o [[<- for lists (generic vectors) needed to increment NAMED count
      when RHS is used more than once. (PR#15098)
    o On Windows, warnings about opening a file or pipe with a
      non-ASCII description were sometimes output in UTF-8 rather than
      in the current locale's character set.
    o The call() function did not duplicate its arguments.  (PR#15115)
    o TukeyHSD() could give NA results with some na.action methods such
      as na.exclude().  (Hinted at on R-help by John Fox.)
    o The deprecated svd(X, LINPACK = TRUE) could alter X in R
      2.15.[12].  (Reported by Bill Dunlap.)
    o Under Windows, file.link() and file.symlink() used the link name
      twice, so would always fail. (Reported by Rui Barradas/Oliver
      Soong).
    o summaryRprof(memory = "both") mixed up the units of Vcells and
      Ncells: it now works in bytes.  (PR#15138)
    o tools::Rd2HTML() would sometimes delete text. (PR#15134)
    o plot() failed for "table" objects containing just one entry.
      (PR#15118)
    o embedFonts() needed to quote some filepaths.  (PR#15149)
    o parallel::mccollect() handled NULL returns incorrectly (removing
      the element rather than setting it to NULL).
    o The full reference index (fullrefman.pdf) was missing packages
      compiler and parallel.
    o The report for optim(method = "L-BFGS-B", control = list(trace  
1)) reported the last completed and not the current iteration,
      unlike other methods and trace levels.  (PR#15103)
    o qt(1e-12, 1.2) no longer gives NaN.
    o dt(1e160, 1.2, log=TRUE) no longer gives -Inf.
    o On Windows the untar() function now quotes the directory name
      when using an external tar utility, so R CMD check will handle
      pathnames containing spaces.
    o The version for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 is now
      displayed by win.version().  (Reported by Gabor Grothendieck.)
    o The custom Windows installer target myR in the installer Makefile
      did not work in 2.15.2.  (Reported by Erich Neuwirth.)
    o aperm(matrix(1:6, 2, dimnames=list(A={}, B={})), "A") no longer
      segfaults.
    o Expressions involving user defined operators were not always
      deparsed faithfully. (PR#15179)
    o The enc2utf8() function converted NA_character_ to "NA" in
      non-UTF-8 locales. (PR#15201)
    o The exclude argument to xtabs() was ignored for "factor"
      arguments.
    o On Windows, work around an event-timing problem when the RGui
      console was closed from the 'X' control and the closure
      cancelled. (This would on some 64-bit systems crash R, typically
      those with a slow GPU relative to the CPU.)
    o On unix Rscript will pass the r_arch setting it was compiled with
      on to the R process so that the architecture of Rscript and that
      of R will match unless overridden.
-- 
Peter Dalgaard, Professor
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Phone: (+45)38153501
Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
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