[Rcpp-devel] No no no -- Distribution of Rcpp codebase

[Romain François]

Le 7 avr. 2014 à 15:34, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> a écrit :

> Romain, Gabor,
> 
> Would you considerr taking this discussion elsewhere?

This is a broad discussion that might be relevant to anyone doing R and C++ work. So no. 

> Or at least make it
> very clear that you are talking about the Rcpp11, which as AFAICT has not
> left Github.

Rcpp11 needs R 3.1.0, so of course it is not on CRAN yet. But this discussion is not about the Rcpp11 package, it is not about the Rcpp package. It is about exchanging ideas about what would be beneficial to the community of people using R and C++. 

The way the Rcpp codebase is currently distributed might have been the best model for years, but I’m not convinced it is the best solution nowadays, so I wanted to discuss, and this list is the best venue, whether you like it or not. 

As for Rcpp11, I am indeed going to release it as an R package, but I will also definitely consider alternatives such as snapshotting the distribution as part of the client package. I think there are advantages to doing that. 

But don’t worry, I will definitely not do anything to change the Rcpp package. You are doing a fine job of keeping it alive. 

> Rcpp was created as a CRAN package.  It remains a CRAN package.  It fits
> squarely into the dependency mechanism of CRAN.  It has proven useful, and
> stable. As a consequence it is as of today used by almost 200 CRAN packages
> and almost 20 BioC package.
> 
> Please do not confuse our users by implying that any of this is about to
> change.  You are more than welcome to experiment with new approaches, new
> implementation, new distributions, ... but *please* make sure you continue to
> do so under a new name too.

or what ? 

> This list is about Rcpp.  The CRAN package.  

In mt view, this list is about R and C++, broadly. At least it was the intention when I created it many years ago. There are plenty of threads in this list that are not stricly related to Rcpp. The world of R and C++ is bigger than Rcpp. 

Romain