R help - Oct 2012 - glpk package missing?

I have a piece of code (from Xie et al. 2009 Autophagy 5:217) that runs 
in R and requires the glpk package. A year or so ago, I was able to 
download and install the glpk package directly from insider the R 
program (for Windows), and everything worked fine. Now I have installed 
R for Windows on a new computer, and I cannot find the glpk package on 
the list of available packages on my local CRAN mirror.

I do see two packages labeled "Rglpk" and "glpkAPI", but as
far as I can
understand these just interface with an outside version of glpk, which I 
don't have. I also found an old link to R glpk in a Wikibooks page, but 
it now says "Package ?glpk? was removed from the CRAN repository."

Is there a reason why the glpk package is no longer available? Can 
anyone suggest the easiest workaround? I tried but failed to install an 
outside version of glpk for windows. I am working on putting together a 
protocol paper that includes the use of this code, so I need some option 
that is simple enough that anyone can do it, without first needing to be 
a computer expert.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Steven Backues

On 10/2/2012 6:08 AM, Steven Backues wrote:
> I have a piece of code (from Xie et al. 2009 Autophagy 5:217) that 
> runs in R and requires the glpk package. A year or so ago, I was able 
> to download and install the glpk package directly from insider the R 
> program (for Windows), and everything worked fine. Now I have 
> installed R for Windows on a new computer, and I cannot find the glpk 
> package on the list of available packages on my local CRAN mirror.
>
> I do see two packages labeled "Rglpk" and "glpkAPI",
but as far as I
> can understand these just interface with an outside version of glpk, 
> which I don't have. I also found an old link to R glpk in a Wikibooks 
> page, but it now says "Package ?glpk? was removed from the CRAN 
> repository."
>
> Is there a reason why the glpk package is no longer available? Can 
> anyone suggest the easiest workaround? I tried but failed to install 
> an outside version of glpk for windows. I am working on putting 
> together a protocol paper that includes the use of this code, so I 
> need some option that is simple enough that anyone can do it, without 
> first needing to be a computer expert.

       Have you tried to contact the author(s) and maintainer(s) of 
Rglpk and glpkAPI to see what they recommend?  If it were my project, I 
think I might try that first.


       Parallel with that, I might download glpk_4.8-0.5.tar.gz from 
CRAN -> Packages -> Archived.  Then I'd do R CMD check and INSTALL
from
that.  Then I'd look for the author(s) and maintainer(s) listed there, 
and try to contact them (or him or her).


       I don't know, but I'd guess that glpk was removed from CRAN after
it failed to pass some new CRAN test and the maintainer failed to reply 
to requests from the CRAN maintainers for updates.


       What other package(s) will be referenced in your protocol paper?  
Is there one you control?  If yes, and you only wanted a few functions 
from glpk, you might just copy that into your package and run with it.  
If no, I think you could name yourself the maintainer of glpk, give it a 
newer number, get it to pass R CMD check, and submit your new version to 
CRAN.  Along the way, you could add other things to make the protocol 
even easier.


       Hope this helps.
       Spencer

> Thanks in advance for your help.
>
> Steven Backues
>
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