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

[Dominick Samperi]

On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 3:55 PM, Romain Francois
<romain at r-enthusiasts.com>wrote:

> Dominick,
>
> Le 16/11/10 21:38, Dominick Samperi a écrit :
>
>> On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 12:36 PM, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org
>> <mailto:edd at debian.org>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>    Hi Christoph,
>>
>>    On 16 November 2010 at 15:59, Christoph Bergmeir wrote:
>>    | Hi Rcpp list,
>>    |
>>    | the CRAN maintainers still don't seem to be too happy about the
>>    dependence on GNU make that gets introduced by $(shell) in the
>>    Makevars files.
>>    |
>>    | The package I recently submitted to CRAN, RSNNS, uses exactly the
>>    same mechanism as proposed in the Rcpp vignette or is implemented
>>    e.g. in termstrc and many other Rcpp packages.
>>    |
>>    | Brian Ripley proposed now in an email on CRAN at r-project.org
>>    <mailto:CRAN at r-project.org> to just use:
>>
>>    |
>>    | PKG_LIBS = `$(R_HOME)/bin/Rscript -e "Rcpp:::LdFlags()"`
>>    |
>>    | Is this a solution? Or are there other drawbacks?
>>
>>    It's a somewhat long story.
>>
>>    It's been about two years since I started to maintain and extend the
>>    Rcpp
>>    package which its previous maintainer had left dead and rotting in the
>>    digital archives for two years already at that point.
>>
>>
>> Correction here. That package that was left "dead and rotting" on CRAN
>> was updated by its author (that would be me) in November of 2009 to
>> include object-mapping features that were later reimplemented in what
>> is now known as the Rcpp package.The syntax used for these features
>> in Rcpp is Rcpp::as and Rcpp:wrap.
>>
>
> wrap and as for which I took the lead have nothing to do with any code you
> wrote, whatever you want to believe, whatever you want people that read you
> to believe. I personally don't think I'd ever want to import ideas from your
> code. I'm creative enough as it is.
>
>
>  Shortly after I released this work the following comment was added to
>> the README file for Rcpp (version 0.8.3):
>>
>> "As of November 2009, Dominick has re-commenced maintenance of
>> RcppTemplate
>> with new releases on CRAN.  This may provide a good opportunity to import
>> some new ideas into Rcpp as well, time permitting."
>>
>
> again with this ! this was "may" not "will" and it just never happened !
> this sentence is no longer in the README, simply because we just never
> import ideas from your RcppTemplate, just as much as we are not imoprting
> ideas from your cxxPack or whetever name you'll give to the next versions.
>  It just happened that we can come up with better ideas on our own.


How do you know that your ideas are better if you did not first look at the
ideas
that came before? Is this not importing ideas? Isn't the use the name 'Rcpp'
an import?
You have simply taken my song and are singing it in your own way!

It is good that the CRAN code cannot be modified once it is submitted.
Anyone with programming
skills who cares can diff the code in question at the time in question (Nov
2009) and settle this
matter objectively. You (Romain) were recruited to join the Rcpp project
*after* this date,
and you have indeed made some valuable contributions over the past year
(some of
the ideas already appeared in RcppTemplate). The ongoing
support provided by you and Dirk is also a valuable service to the R
community.

That said, I do not think it is very productive for you to trash work that
formed the foundation
the Rcpp project.

BTW, I am using Rcpp in my cxxPack package (to be updated shortly) because I
do not
want to reinvent the wheel, and because Rcpp seems to have become part of R
core
development. One concern I have is that the "wheel" is getting pretty big.
Rcpp was
originally intended to be a lightweight solution to the R/C++ interface
problem.

Dominick


>
>
>  Thus the linkage to previous work is not quite what the "dead and rotting"
>> comment above would have you believe.
>>
>
> Romain
>
> --
> Romain Francois
> Professional R Enthusiast
> +33(0) 6 28 91 30 30
> http://romainfrancois.blog.free.fr
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>
>
>
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