On Thu, 22 Jan 2015, Max Kuhn wrote:
On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 1:05 PM, Achim Zeileis <achim.zeil...@uibk.ac.at> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Jan 2015, Max Kuhn wrote:
On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 12:45 PM, Achim Zeileis
<achim.zeil...@uibk.ac.at> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Jan 2015, Max Kuhn wrote:
I've had a lot of requests for additions to the reproducible research
task view that fall into a grey area (to me at least).
For example, roxygen2 is a tool that broadly enable reproducibility
but I see it more as a tool for better programming. I'm about to check
in a new version of the task view that includes packrat and
checkpoint, as they seem closer to reproducible research, but also
feel like coding tools.
There are a few other packages that many would find useful for better
coding: devtools, testthat, lintr, codetools, svTools, rbenchmark,
pkgutils, etc.
This might be some overlap with the HPC task view. I would think that
rJava, Rcpp and the like are better suited there but this is arguable.
The last time I proposed something like this, Martin deftly convinced
me to be the maintainer. It is probably better for everyone if we
avoid that on this occasion.
* Does anyone else see the need for this?
* What other packages fit into this bin?
* Would anyone like to volunteer?
Max, thanks for the suggestion. We had a somewhat related proposal on
R-help
from Luca Braglia a couple of months ago, suggesting a "Package
Development"
task view:
https://mailman.stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2014-July/069454.html
He put up some ideas on Github:
https://github.com/lbraglia/PackageDevelopmentTaskView
When Luca asked me (ctv maintainer) and Dirk (HPC task view maintainer)
for
feedback off-list, I replied that it is important that task views are
focused in order to be useful and maintainable. My feeling was that
"PackageDevelopment" was too broad and also "ProgrammingTools" is still
too
board, I think. This could mean a lot of things/tools to a lot of people.
But maybe it would be to factor out some aspect that is sharp and
clear(er)?
Or split it up into bits where there are (more or less) objectively clear
criteria for what goes in and what does not?
It's funny that you said that. As I was updating the RR CTV, it
realized what a beast it is right now. I thought about making a github
project earlier today that would have more detailed examples and
information.
I see two problems with that as the *sole* solution.
First, it is divorced from CRAN CTV and that is a place that people
know and will look. I had no idea of Luca's work for this exact
reason.
Secondly, might be intimidating for new R users who, I think, are the
targeted cohort for the CTVs.
Yes, I agree. There should (an) additional task view(s) on CRAN related to
this.
How about a relatively broad definition that is succinct in content
with a link to a github repos?
I think this doesn't fit well with the existing development model and might
require duplicating changes in the <packagelist> of the task view. In order
to be easily installable I need the <packagelist> in the task view on CRAN
and not just in the linked list on Github.
Many of the task views are encyclopedic and still focused. Perhaps my
issues with RR are more related to how I currently organize it. I'll
try to solve it that way.
Therefore, I would suggest splitting up the topic into things that are
fairly sharp and clear. (Of course, it is impossible to avoid overlap
completely.) For example, one could add "LanguageInterfaces" or something
like that.
Looking at Luca's page, I think he does a great job of clustering
packages. My suggestions for focused topics are:
- Package Development*
- Foreign Languages Interfaces
- Code Analysis and Debugging
- Profiling and Benchmarking
- Unit Testing
Yes, good suggestions. Now we only need willing maintainers :-)
* I would define the first one to be more narrow than the original
definition.
It's probably still the fuzziest one in the list above.
I think that most of these would encompass less than 10 packages if we
don't include all the Rcpp depends =]
:-)
And the task views on CRAN can always include <links> to further
documentation on Github and elsewhere. Especially when it comes to package
development there are also clearly different preferences about what is good
style or the right tools (say Github vs. R-Forge, knitr vs. Sweave, etc.)
Yes. The comments above would not exclude this approach, which
is/was/might be my intention for RR.
True.
thx,
Z
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