Re: base R packages conflicting with CRAN packages

[Brook Milligan <brook%nmsu.edu@localhost>]

> On Feb 27, 2017, at 9:50 AM, Jason Bacon <bacon4000%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:
> 
>> It is off-topic but I gave up on R packages due to lack of PLIST files.
>> This made my work on R uncontrollable and unmaintainable. That said
>> probably it's just better to rely on packages from CRAN directly without
>> pkgsrc...
>> 
> 
> I've been leaning in this direction as well.  It seems impossible to keep the R-cran packages in any package manager up-to-date and complete.  Our users inevitably have to build some of their own, which is easy within an R script.

On the other hand, I have run into cases where R complains that a package version is not available via install.packages(), but it can be installed separately through pkgsrc just fine.

Are you aware of pkgtools/R2pkg?  That is a little package I wrote to create and manage CRAN packages.  I have found that it works quite well, although I need to push out some of my recent additions.

There is some tension between CRAN and package managers, but I have found having packages in pkgsrc to be more useful than not.  In fact, the problem that triggered this thread is the first time I have run into direct conflict and that is a problem with R dictating/recommending an out-of-date CRAN package.

Cheers,
Brook