[R] plot graph with error bars trouble

[hadley wickham]

>     >> It's something I have thought a little bit about, but I haven't made
>     >> much progress. Ideally, if it's something that I do for ggplot2, I
>     >> should do it for all my other R packages too.
>
> I don't see why doing it for *some* package(s) should entail
> doing it for all of them

Perhaps that was worded too strongly - I meant say that I want a
system that will work for all of my packages, not just one.  ie. the
set up time for 10 packages shouldn't be prohibitive.

>     >> There is also the psychological barrier of giving up complete
>     >> ownership of the code, and accepting that people will write code that
>     >> is different to the way I'd write it.
>
> indeed. Probably that's the most important hurdle ...

But of course, necessary, if you want your project to live beyond you.

> I would have thought  that R-forge (http://r-forge.r-project.org/)
> was really the place (and infrastructure) such community
> development of an R package should take place,
> or .. why not?

The biggest drawback (to me) to both google code and R-forge, is their
failure to offer a nice interface to browser the svn repository and
view the timeline of changes.  I particularly like trac (e.g.
http://src.ggobi.org/) despite it's many problems, and I don't think I
want to do without that convenient view of my code.

Simon's r-forge (http://rforge.net) allows me to continue using my
existing infrastructure, but adds automated package building.  I can
use svn-externals to point it to my existing svn repository (or
probably a new one, which contains my public projects) and I can
continue to supply my own views of the repository.

I don't need any of the extra services that R R-forge provides
(mailing lists, forums, news, etc) and I don't find the "heavy" design
(containing links to everything you might possibly need, rather than
the bare minimum) particularly appealing.  (This is because of the
Gforge software, not any of the efforts of the R-forge developers)

I don't claim that this is the right solution for everyone, but I am
growing increasing certain it is the right solution for me.

Hadley

-- 
http://had.co.nz/