[Rcpp-devel] Dependence on GNU make because of $(shell)

Dominick Samperi djsamperi at gmail.com
Wed Nov 17 16:09:59 CET 2010


On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 9:56 AM, Shane Conway <shane.conway at gmail.com>wrote:

> Dominick,
>
> My 2 cents:
>
> Nobody gets to decide when something is dead; it's more a consensus
> view driven by everyone who uses or contributes.  Looking back at the
> RcppTemplate archive, I think that characterization is pretty
> accurate: http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/cxxPack/Ancestry/.
>  A similar look at the most recent version of Rcpp shows that it's
> alive and well: http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/Rcpp/.
> We should all be nothing but thankful that Dirk and Romain stepped in
> and contributed so much.
>
> You are mentioned in every Rcpp source file and in the package
> documentation.  Beyond that, the old package was most definitely dead.
>

All citations have date ranges: 2005-2006 (the "Rcpp Classic" era), and that

is quite different from Nov 2009 (see previous discussion). The work that
you are so
grateful for occurred *after* Nov 2009, not before.

I am also grateful for this work, Romain is obviously a talented programmer,
and the support provided by Romain and Dirk is a valuable service, as I
have said before.

I wish I did not have to maintain cxxPack, much of it should be part
of Rcpp, but working cooperatively on this seems to be out of the
question.


> Shane
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 9:38 AM, Dominick Samperi <djsamperi at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 7:44 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 16 November 2010 at 23:28, Dominick Samperi wrote:
> >> | I explained already how anyone who cares can do a diff and resolve
> >> | this objectively.
> >>
> >> Please show us such a diff and put some proof into this pudding.
> >>
> >> Or else stop harping about a non-existing issue.  Time to "put up or
> shut
> >> up".
> >>
> >> | after Nov 2009, so Rcpp today is a different animal. This thread
> started
> >> | with your remark that my prior work, work that is the foundation for
> >> | the current Rcpp package, was left "dead and rotting." The purpose
> >> | of my reply was to correct this misleading remark.
> >>
> >> Not it wasn't. I will stand by "dead and rotting".
> >>
> >> Look, it's simple. RQuantLib was always a user of Rcpp, and I can assure
> >> you
> >> that by late 2008 your code __which had not been touched in 2 years__ no
> >> longer even compiled under current g++ versions. I was using it. I
> believe
> >> CRAN had even moved the package off the main page as it didn't build,
> and
> >> you
> >> obviously didn't care for it.  So I fixed that and started making
> >> extensions;
> >> see the ChangeLog for the initial changes as well as everything we all
> did
> >> since. The per-project SVN commit counter for Rcpp is now at over 2400.
> >> That's 2400 individual changesets, sometimes small and sometimes large.
> In
> >> the space of two years.  Whereas you left RcppTemplate without single
> >> character changes in three years when it didn't even build. That's what
> I
> >> call "dead and rotting".
> >>
> >> And I for one do not think it is a coincidence that you come back
> another
> >> year later bringing the rot to then _three years_ with a short-lived
> >> update. And I suspect that without the ongoing Rcpp work you would never
> >> have
> >> done that brief camoe re-appearance of RcppTemplate.
> >>
> >> Anyway, "dead and rotting" it was and yes, please do provide proof for
> >> your
> >> allegations.
> >>
> >
> > I have already provided proof in the form of your own words Dirk. The
> > quote from Rcpp 0.8.3 that was cited earlier in this thread first
> appeared
> > in Rcpp 0.6.7 (released Nov 8, 2009), shortly after my release of
> > RcppTemplate 6.1 (release Nov 6, 2009), and before Romain joined
> > the Rcpp project. Thus if anybody cares to diff, the relevant versions
> > are Rcpp 0.6.7 and RcppTemplate 6.1 (the name RcppTemplate was
> > chosen to limit confusion between the package name and the
> > library name, BTW).
> >
> > I wonder how the authors of the recently released neural network package
> > would feel if they saw another package author make similar remarks just
> > days after the release of their hard work, followed by a wholesale
> > effort to reimplement their work in another package.
> >
> > On Rcpp::as and Rcpp::wrap, the first is alternate syntax ("sugar")
> > for a C++ SEXP constructor, and the function of Rcpp::wrap was performed
> > by what I called getSEXP(). There was also some use of STL classes
> > to facilitate streaming C++ to R objects. My versions were in the
> prototype
> > phase, not as comprehensive as what was implemented later by
> > Romain, but the main ideas were there in RcppTemplate.
> >
> > Shortly after the release of my work others joined the Rcpp team, the
> > pace of development increased dramatically, and it became clear that
> > to avoid wasting my time I needed to take my work in a different
> > direction, so I withdrew RcppTemplate and created cxxPack.
> >
> > It is ironic that cxxPack is actually just the underlying plumbing for
> > number of packages that I have developed over the years and was planning
> > to release to CRAN, but I have been somewhat reluctant to do this
> > in view of my experiences with Rcpp/cxxPack.
> >
> > Finally, who decides when a package is "dead and rotting"? The
> > person who wants to take it over?
> >
> > Dominick
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Rcpp-devel mailing list
> > Rcpp-devel at lists.r-forge.r-project.org
> > https://lists.r-forge.r-project.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rcpp-devel
> >
> >
>
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