[ESS] ESS 17.11 released
Martin Maechler
maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch
Mon Nov 13 10:11:51 CET 2017
Dear ESS users
I'm happy to announce the release of ESS 17.11 (2017 - November)
in the name of the ESS core team.
The change since the last release 16.10 are not spectacular
maybe, but there have been many small improvements and bug
fixes and the improvements for package developer etc may be
particularly important.
For the complete list of (documented) new features and bug
fixes, read the following (beginning of file 'ANNOUNCE') to the end.
In the name of the ESS core team, with thanks to all helpers,
notably by github pull requests,
Martin
--
Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich
1 ANNOUNCING ESS
****************
The ESS Developers proudly announce the release of ESS 17.11
Emacs Speaks Statistics (ESS) provides an intelligent, consistent
interface between the user and the software. ESS interfaces with
R/S-PLUS, SAS, BUGS/JAGS, Stata and other statistical analysis packages
under the UNIX, GNU Linux, Microsoft Windows, macOS and other operating
systems. ESS is a package for the GNU Emacs and XEmacs text editors
whose features ESS uses to streamline the creation and use of
statistical software. ESS knows the syntax and grammar of statistical
analysis packages and provides consistent display and editing features
based on that knowledge. ESS assists in interactive and batch execution
of statements written in these statistical analysis languages.
ESS is freely available under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Please read the file COPYING which comes with the distribution, for more
information about the license. For more detailed information, please
read the README files that come with ESS.
1.1 Getting the Latest Version
==============================
The latest released version of ESS is always available on the web at:
ESS web page (http://ess.r-project.org) or StatLib
(http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/general/ESS/)
1.1.1 Git for ESS development
-----------------------------
For development and experimentation on new ESS features, there is now a
GitHub branch for ESS, available at <https://github.com/emacs-ess/ESS>.
1.2 Current Features
====================
* Languages Supported:
* S family (R and S+ AKA S-PLUS)
* SAS
* OpenBUGS/JAGS
* Stata
* Julia
* Editing source code (S family, SAS, OpenBUGS/JAGS, Stata, Julia)
* Syntactic indentation and highlighting of source code
* Partial evaluation of code
* Loading and error-checking of code
* Source code revision maintenance
* Batch execution (SAS, OpenBUGS/JAGS)
* Use of imenu to provide links to appropriate functions
* Interacting with the process (S family, SAS, Stata, Julia)
* Command-line editing
* Searchable Command history
* Command-line completion of S family object names and file
names
* Quick access to object lists and search lists
* Transcript recording
* Interface to the help system
* Transcript manipulation (S family, Stata)
* Recording and saving transcript files
* Manipulating and editing saved transcripts
* Re-evaluating commands from transcript files
* Interaction with Help Pages and other Documentation (R)
* Fast Navigation
* Sending Examples to running ESS process.
* Fast Transfer to Further Help Pages
* Help File Editing (R)
* Syntactic indentation and highlighting of source code.
* Sending Examples to running ESS process.
* Previewing
1.3 Requirements
================
ESS is most likely to work with current/recent versions of the following
statistical packages: R/S-PLUS, SAS, Stata, OpenBUGS and JAGS.
ESS supports current, and recent, stable versions of GNU Emacs
(currently, 24.4 or higher; alpha/beta/pre-release versions are NOT
SUPPORTED).
Due to XEmacs lacking some features that ESS requires, ESS support of
XEmacs ended with ESS 12.04-4.
To build the PDF documentation, you will need a version of TeX Live
or texinfo that includes texi2dvi (BEWARE: recent TeX Live, and some
texinfo RPMs, do NOT include texi2dvi).
1.4 Stability
=============
All recent released versions are meant to be release-quality versions.
While some new features are being introduced, we are cleaning up and
improving the interface. We know that there are many remaining
opportunities for documentation improvements, but all contributors are
volunteers and time is precious. Patches or suggested fixes with bug
reports are much appreciated!
1.5 Mailing List
================
There is a mailing list for discussions and announcements relating to
ESS. Join the list by sending an e-mail with "subscribe ess-help" (or
"help") in the body to <ess-help-request at r-project.org>; contributions
to the list may be mailed to <ess-help at r-project.org>. Rest assured,
this is a fairly low-volume mailing list.
The purposes of the mailing list include
* helping users of ESS to get along with it.
* discussing aspects of using ESS on Emacs and XEmacs.
* suggestions for improvements.
* announcements of new releases of ESS.
* posting small patches to ESS.
1.6 Reporting Bugs
==================
Please send bug reports, suggestions etc. to <ESS-bugs at r-project.org>
The easiest way to do this is within Emacs by typing
'M-x ess-submit-bug-report'
This also gives the maintainers valuable information about your
installation which may help us to identify or even fix the bug.
If Emacs reports an error, backtraces can help us debug the problem.
Type "M-x set-variable RET debug-on-error RET t RET". Then run the
command that causes the error and you should see a *Backtrace* buffer
containing debug information; send us that buffer.
Note that comments, suggestions, words of praise and large cash
donations are also more than welcome.
1.7 Authors
===========
* A.J. Rossini (mailto:blindglobe at gmail.com)
* Richard M. Heiberger (mailto:rmh at temple.edu)
* Kurt Hornik (mailto:Kurt.Hornik at R-project.org)
* Martin Maechler (mailto:maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch)
* Rodney A. Sparapani (mailto:rsparapa at mcw.edu)
* Stephen Eglen (mailto:stephen at gnu.org)
* Sebastian P. Luque (mailto:spluque at gmail.com)
* Henning Redestig (mailto:henning.red at googlemail.com)
* Vitalie Spinu (mailto:spinuvit at gmail.com)
* Lionel Henry (mailto:lionel.hry at gmail.com)
1.8 License
===========
The source and documentation of ESS is free software. You can
redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
version 2, or (at your option) any later version.
ESS is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License in
the file COPYING in the same directory as this file for more details.
1.9 New Features
================
Changes and New Features in 17.11:
* The ESS initialisation process has been streamlined. You can now
load the R and Stata modes independently from the rest of ESS. Just
put '(require 'ess-r-mode)' or '(require 'ess-stata-mode)' in your
init file. This is for experienced Emacs users as this requires
setting up autoloads for '.R' files manually. We will keep
maintaining 'ess-site' for easy loading of all ESS features.
* Reloading and quitting the process is now more robust. If no
process is attached, ESS now switches automatically to one
(prompting you for selection if there are several running).
Reloading and quitting will now work during a debug session or when
R is prompting for input (for instance after a crash). Finally,
the window configuration is saved and restored after reloading to
prevent the buffer of the new process from capturing the cursor.
* ESS[R]: New command 'ess-r-package-use-dir'. It sets the working
directory of the current process to the current package directory.
* ESS[R] Lookup for references in inferior buffers has been improved.
New variable 'ess-r-package-source-roots' contains package
sub-directories which are searched recursively during the file
lookup point. Directories in 'ess-tracebug-search-path' are now
also searched recursively.
* ESS[R] Namespaced evaluation is now automatically enabled only in
the 'R/' directory. This way ESS will not attempt to update
function definitions from a package if you are working from e.g. a
test file.
Changes and New Features in 16.10:
* ESS[R]: Syntax highlighting is now more consistent. Backquoted
names are not fontified as strings (since they really are
identifiers). Furthermore they are now correctly recognised when
they are function definitions or function calls.
* ESS[R]: Backquoted names and '%op%' operators are recognised as
sexp. This is useful for code navigation, e.g. with 'C-M-f' and
'C-M-b'.
* ESS[R]: Integration of outline mode with roxygen examples fields.
You can use outline mode's code folding commands to fold the
examples field. This is especially nice to use with well
documented packages with long examples set. Set
'ess-roxy-fold-examples' to non-nil to automatically fold the
examples field when you open a buffer.
* ESS[R]: New experimental feature: syntax highlighting in roxygen
examples fields. This is turned off by default. Set
'ess-roxy-fontify-examples' to non-nil to try it out.
* ESS[R]: New package development command 'ess-r-devtools-ask' bound
to 'C-c C-w C-a'. It asks with completion for any devtools command
that takes 'pkg' as argument.
* ESS[R]: New command 'C-c C-e C-r' to reload the inferior process.
Currently only implemented for R. The R method runs
'inferior-ess-r-reload-hook' on reloading.
* ESS[R]: 'ess-r-package-mode' is now activated in non-file buffers
as well.
Bug fixes in 16.10:
* ESS[R]: Fix broken (un)flagging for debugging inside packages
* ESS[R]: Fixes (and improvements) in Package development
* ESS[R]: Completion no longer produces '...=' inside 'list( )'.
* ESS[R]: Better debugging and tracing in packages.
* ESS[R]: Better detection of symbols at point.
* ESS[R]: No more spurious warnings on deletion of temporary files.
* ESS[julia]: help and completion work (better)
* ESS[julia]: available via 'ess-remote'
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