Hello, I would like have an automatic way to avoid installing packages that I cannot use due to license restrictions. For example, the conf.design package is limited to non-commercial use, and since I work for a for-profit business, I cannot use it. I found out about the license terms of conf.design by chance; I would like to avoid any possibility of a mistake in the future. Is there some clever combination of grep and install.packages that I could use to limit my downloads to, say, GPL-only packages? Thanks, Ted Ted Mendum | Senior Scientist Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry 66 Cummings Park, Woburn, MA 01801 p:?? 781-937-9000?? f: 781-937-9001 ted.mendum at warnerbabcock.com www.warnerbabcock.com
On Wed, 26 Nov 2008, Ted Mendum wrote:> Hello, > > I would like have an automatic way to avoid installing packages that I cannot use due to license restrictions. > > For example, the conf.design package is limited to non-commercial use, and since I work for a for-profit business, I cannot use it. > > I found out about the license terms of conf.design by chance; I would like to avoid any possibility of a mistake in the future. > > Is there some clever combination of grep and install.packages that I could use to limit my downloads to, say, GPL-only packages?Something like:> txt <- readLines(url("http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/ALS/index.html")) > aok <- regexpr("GPL",txt[grep("License",txt)+1])>0will work on CRAN as it is formatted now. Maybe roll it up in a function, say license.ok(), that returns the name of package if aok or print the license and stop if not aok. Then install.packages(license.ok(pkg.name)) should do it. Of course, this does not handle dependencies. For that you might want to parse with index.html with XML, follow the dependencies and check them all out, first. HTH, Chuck> > Thanks, > > Ted > > > Ted Mendum | Senior Scientist > Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry > 66 Cummings Park, Woburn, MA 01801 > > p:?? 781-937-9000?? > f: 781-937-9001 > > ted.mendum at warnerbabcock.com > www.warnerbabcock.com > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. >Charles C. Berry (858) 534-2098 Dept of Family/Preventive Medicine E mailto:cberry at tajo.ucsd.edu UC San Diego http://famprevmed.ucsd.edu/faculty/cberry/ La Jolla, San Diego 92093-0901
On 26/11/2008 4:43 PM, Ted Mendum wrote:> Hello, > > I would like have an automatic way to avoid installing packages that I cannot use due to license restrictions. > > For example, the conf.design package is limited to non-commercial use, and since I work for a for-profit business, I cannot use it. > > I found out about the license terms of conf.design by chance; I would like to avoid any possibility of a mistake in the future. > > Is there some clever combination of grep and install.packages that I could use to limit my downloads to, say, GPL-only packages?In theory, you should be able to look at the License field of available.packages(fields="License") and limit yourself to those with acceptable licenses. However, I don't think CRAN reports on the license. However, after you have installed a set of packages, you can scan the set of licenses using this code: installed.packages(fields="License")[,"License"] Duncan Murdoch> > Thanks, > > Ted > > > Ted Mendum | Senior Scientist > Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry > 66 Cummings Park, Woburn, MA 01801 > > p: 781-937-9000 > f: 781-937-9001 > > ted.mendum at warnerbabcock.com > www.warnerbabcock.com > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.