Good to know. I know that other software projects (whether languages, OSes, applications) tend to keep recent versions in maintenance mode for a certain period of time prior to "retiring them". I wonder if that would happen with R, either by design or out of necessity of an increasing user base.
Brian -----Original Message----- From: Thomas Lumley [mailto:tlum...@u.washington.edu] Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 12:50 PM To: Rowe, Brian Lee Yung (Portfolio Analytics) Cc: r-h...@stat.math.ethz.ch Subject: Re: [R] Software lifecycle for R releases (aka practical limits of support for older versions) On Thu, 25 Jun 2009, Rowe, Brian Lee Yung (Portfolio Analytics) wrote: > Does anyone have thoughts on the lifecycle of older releases of R? I > know that currently the 2.8.x and 2.9.x releases seem to be actively > "supported" on the mailing lists, but what about older releases, say > 2.4.x? Curious to hear when people think older versions of R become > obsolete and unsupportable on the lists (or other venues). Opinions vary, but: - reporting bugs (or asking if something is a bug) based on any older version of R than 2.9.x would likely get you flamed. - if your problem could be solved by updating to the current version, I think you would be expected to do so. My personal feeling is that you can just about get away with updating R only annually. Since you can easily keep an archive of previous versions available, there's no need to avoid updating on that account. Based just on R itself a longer update delay might be ok, but CRAN doesn't supply binaries of new or updated packages for old versions of R. Many packages will become seriously outdated much faster than base R. -thomas Thomas Lumley Assoc. Professor, Biostatistics tlum...@u.washington.edu University of Washington, Seattle -------------------------------------------------------------------------- This message w/attachments (message) may be privileged, confidential or proprietary, and if you are not an intended recipient, please notify the sender, do not use or share it and delete it. Unless specifically indicated, this message is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of any investment products or other financial product or service, an official confirmation of any transaction, or an official statement of Merrill Lynch. Subject to applicable law, Merrill Lynch may monitor, review and retain e-communications (EC) traveling through its networks/systems. The laws of the country of each sender/recipient may impact the handling of EC, and EC may be archived, supervised and produced in countries other than the country in which you are located. This message cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free. References to "Merrill Lynch" are references to any company in the Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. group of companies, which are wholly-owned by Bank of America Corporation. Secu! rities and Insurance Products: * Are Not FDIC Insured * Are Not Bank Guaranteed * May Lose Value * Are Not a Bank Deposit * Are Not a Condition to Any Banking Service or Activity * Are Not Insured by Any Federal Government Agency. Attachments that are part of this E-communication may have additional important disclosures and disclaimers, which you should read. This message is subject to terms available at the following link: http://www.ml.com/e-communications_terms/. By messaging with Merrill Lynch you consent to the foregoing. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
