On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 1:38 PM, Karl Forner <karl.for...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 6:27 PM, Gábor Csárdi <csardi.ga...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 12:40 PM, Karl Forner <karl.for...@gmail.com>wrote:
>> [...]
>>
>>> Hmm, what if your package depends on packages A and B, and that A
>>> depends on C v1.0 and B depends on C v1.1 ? This is just an example but I
>>> imagine that will lead to a lot of complexities.
>>>
>>
>> You'll have to be able to load (but not attach, of course!) multiple
>> versions of the same package at the same time. The search paths are set up
>> so that A imports v1.0 of C, B imports v1.1. This is possible to support
>> with R's namespaces and imports mechanisms, I believe.
>>
>
> not really: I think there are still cases (unfortunately) where you have
> to use depends, e.g. when defining S4 methods for classes implemented in
> other packages.
> But my point is that you would need really really smart tools, AND to be
> able to install precise versions of packages.
>
Yes, but these are some things that can be set as goals, and then we can
work towards them slowly, keeping compatibility.
I would also emphasize that there is no need to (re)invent the wheel here,
there are working models of software distributions, both for versioned
dependencies (NPM), and having stable and devel repositories (almost all
Linux distributions, BioC, etc.). Most of these are much bigger than CRAN,
in terms of number of packages and volume.
Gabor
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