[R] R "sumo" package suggestion

Pfaff, Bernhard
Fri, 12 Nov 2004 14:22:47 -0000

Dear list member,

sorry, for jumping in this thread and/or the gun.
What springs immediately to my mind is: if such a functionality should be
realised, it might be beneficial too to have something similar to Thomas
Ruedas `texdocTK' at hand; i.e. the retrieval of the pdf-package
documentations sorted by category and of course the manuals that are shipped
with a base installation. Well, but one after the other...

Best Regards,
Bernhard

> Hello,
> >
> > I think Achim suggestion is more realistic: it does not
> imply automatic
> > installation of all packages, but just a restricted list of packages
> > available on CRAN about a specific topic.
> >
> > An easy way to get this result is to propose separate lists of
> > packages. It
> > means separate lists than
> > http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/PACKAGES.html (and
> 'PACKAGES' in
> > the
> > Windows packages binaries). I don't see the problem to
> propose other
> > lists
> > that could be called 'SpatialStats.html' (in packages
> > sources)/'SpatialStats' (in Windows binaries)... and the same
for
> > 'MachineLearning', 'Biostats', etc...
> >
> > Then, of course the various functions that install packages
> should be
> > adapted to use these lists. It does not look like an unsurmontable
> > task.
> >
> > Of course, if this is not done yet by the R Core Team, I
> presume that
> > there
> > must be difficulties that I don't see. It is obvious that,
> either we
> > need a
> > list maintainer for each topic, or we have to propose keywords for
> > packages
> > (similar to the keywords for functions) that will be used to
> > automatically
> > generate those separate lists.
> >
> > An alternative that can currently be used for groups of users in an
> > institution is to maintain a local copy of R packages
> repository, which
> > contains only the packages of interest for this group. I do
> so for my
> > students. Under Windows, in the new R 2.0.1 beta, there is
> a new menu
> > entry
> > in packages -> Set CRAN mirror... (in my version it does
> not work yet,
> > looking for a missing .\doc\CRAN_mirrors.csv file), but I
> can easily
> > figure
> > out how it works and how I could append my own repository
> to the list
> > to
> > ease installation of a restricted list of R packages by my
> students.
> > This is
> > only for Windows, but a similar approach can also be used on other
> > platforms
> > with a little bit of coding.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Philippe
> >
> >
..............................................<??}))><........
> >  ) ) ) ) )
> > ( ( ( ( (    Prof. Philippe Grosjean
> >  ) ) ) ) )
> > ( ( ( ( (    Numerical Ecology of Aquatic Systems
> >  ) ) ) ) )   Mons-Hainaut University, Pentagone
> > ( ( ( ( (    Academie Universitaire Wallonie-Bruxelles
> >  ) ) ) ) )   6, av du Champ de Mars, 7000 Mons, Belgium
> > ( ( ( ( (
> >  ) ) ) ) )   phone: + 32.65.37.34.97, fax: + 32.65.37.33.12
> > ( ( ( ( (    email: Philippe.Grosjean at umh.ac.be
> >  ) ) ) ) )
> > ( ( ( ( (    web:   http://www.umh.ac.be/~econum
> >  ) ) ) ) )
> > ..............................................................
> >
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
> >> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of
> Achim Zeileis
> >> Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2004 10:21 PM
> >> To: Liaw, Andy
> >> Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch; rsparapa at post.its.mcw.edu
> >> Subject: Re: [R] R "sumo" package suggestion
> >>
> >> 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
> >>>>
> >>>> ______________________________________________
> >>>> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> >>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> >>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide!
> >>>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> ______________________________________________
> >>> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> >>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> >>> PLEASE do read the posting guide!
> >>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> >>>
> >>
> >> ______________________________________________
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> >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> >> PLEASE do read the posting guide!
> >> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> >>
> >>
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > PLEASE do read the posting guide!
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> >
> >
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------
> ---------
> Dr. Andrew Beckerman
> Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield,
> Alfred Denny Building, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK
> ph +44 (0)114 222 0026; fx +44 (0)114 222 0002
> http://www.shef.ac.uk/beckslab
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------
> ----------
>
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