[Rcpp-devel] Distribution of Rcpp codebase

[Romain François]

Le 8 avr. 2014 à 10:51, Rainer M Krug <Rainer at krugs.de> a écrit :

> Martyn Plummer <plummerm at iarc.fr> writes:
> 
>> And another 2 cents from me.
>> 
>> A package is the basic unit of functionality in R. Whatever
>> functionality you are providing, I think a package is the best way to
>> deliver it. There is a well developed framework for versioning,
>> dependency resolution, testing, and distribution.
>> 
>> If you choose some other mechanism, then I suspect that any developer
>> problems you eliminate will just return as system administration
>> problems.
> 
> I thought I could keep out of this...
> 
> rcpp... is so much the core of many packages, that the mechanism of
> packages really shows its shortcomings, namely the versioning. A
> different aspect was discussed on the r-devel list some time ago
> concerning snapshots of CRAN to provide reproducibility.
> 
> The part which makes rcpp outstanding from other packages, is that it is
> used mainly during compilation and not that much during running - that
> is if I understand the "header only" concept correctly.

Well with the current Rcpp, you still need the runtime for any of the functions that are registered here: https://github.com/RcppCore/Rcpp/blob/master/src/Rcpp_init.cpp#L85

That’s what I meant earlier when I mentioned job half done. The intention of the change in 0.11.0 was to move away from runtime, but we did not go far enough. 

> In contrast, as far as I know, all other packages provide run-time
> features as well as compile time - and this is what the packages were
> designed for - and I might say they work quite well. 

I agree. 

> I can see Romain's point (oparticularly the more fine grained control of
> the developer), but I also understand that Dirk will keep rcpp as a
> package.

Sure. 

> My question is: would it be possible to combine these two, i.e. have one
> package, which contains different versions, and to use one command to
> switch between these? So one would have one package, which will switch
> between different versions?

I see your point, but I would not want to do that. I can definitely foresee a whole new class of issues with this scenario. 

> I don't know if this would be possible or a suitable solution?
> 
> The other would obviously be to have different versions of rcpp on CRAN,
> similar to ggplot or oxygen.

I can see this working. 

But there could be Rcpp_0_12_0, Rcpp_0_12_1, etc .. as different packages so that developers who want to update their package would need to change the version on which they depend. 

Not sure CRAN would be impressed if I start releasing a new package for each version. 

> Cheers,
> 
> Rainer
> 
>> 
>> Martyn
>> 
>> On Tue, 2014-04-08 at 10:12 +0200, Xavier Robin wrote:
>>> My 2 cents...
>>> 
>>> On 07/04/14 10:12, Romain François wrote:
>>>> It would also mean many copies of the same code base. To which I’m thinking: so what.
>>> No, it will mean many copies of /many different and mostly outdated/ 
>>> code bases.
>>> You can count on me to forget to git pull next time I update my package.
>>> 
>>> What about something like the BH package that contains the boost 
>>> headers? I'm using it in a project I'm working on, and just use a 
>>> LinkingTo declaration with something in Makevars.
>>> Of course ideally it would be in a build-depends type of declaration so 
>>> it isn't pulled during binary installs.
>>> 
>>> Xavier
>>> 
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> 
> -- 
> Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)
> 
> Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
> Stellenbosch University
> South Africa
> 
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