[Rd] [RFC] A case for freezing CRAN

[Rainer M Krug]

Hadley Wickham <h.wickham at gmail.com> writes:

>> What would be more useful in terms of reproducibility is the capability of
>> installing a specific version of a package from a repository using
>> install.packages(), which would require archiving older versions in a
>> coordinated fashion. I know CRAN archives old versions, but I am not aware
>> if we can programmatically query the repository about this.
>
> See devtools::install_version().
>
> The main caveat is that you also need to be able to build the package,
> and ensure you have dependencies that work with that version.

The compiling will always be the problem when using older source
packages, whatever is done.

But for the dependencies: an automatic parsing of the dependencies
(DEPENDS, IMPORTS, ...) would help a lot. 

Together with a command which scans the installed package in the session
and stores them in a parsable human readable format so that all packages
(with the specified version) required can be installed with one command,
and I think the problem would be much closer to be solved.

Rainer

>
> Hadley

-- 
Rainer M. Krug
email: Rainer<at>krugs<dot>de
PGP: 0x0F52F982
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