On Sep 1, 2009, at 17:41 , gvst...@yahoo.com wrote:
2009/8/30 Uwe Ligges <lig...@statistik.tu-dortmund.de>:
[snip]
Guido van Steen wrote:
[snip]
Something that interests me too: What about R's policy with
respect to
including binary files? I saw that developers should include a file
[snip]
Please do not include binary files and carefully watch for licenses
of those
files (e.g. if GPL'ed, you need to ship sources!). If pyhthon is
required, I
highly suggest to state it in the SystemDependencies and be fine
with it -
users can learn to install phython themselves, I'm pretty sure.
Hi Uwe,
Note: I will send this email cc. to the R-devel list, which I joined
today. I think it may be of interest to other people as well.
Thank you for your answer, although it disappointed me a bit. I had
already spent quite some time building a stand-alone windows binary
of a new package "write2xls". This package provides the same R
interface to Python as the other package "dataframes2xls". As you
know it enable users to create xls files. The special thing about
"write2xls" is that it does not have any dependencies at all. It is
so-to-speak a turn-key solution.
Of course I should have read a bit more before I started. Only after
your mail I read the pdf-file "Writing R Extensions". It says "A
source package if possible should not contain binary executable
files: they are not portable, and a security risk if they are of the
appropriate architecture. R CMD check will warn about them unless
they are listed (one filepath per line) in a file 'BinaryFiles' at
the top level of the package or bundle. Note that CRAN will no
longer accept submissions containing binary files even if they are
listed."
So, yes, you are right. I was actually hoping that CRAN could make
some exceptions,
Just for other people - it is in general not necessary to make such
exceptions because it's easy to pull any necessary binary dependencies
at build or run time where needed and there are examples of packages
that do exactly that (e.g. RGtk2 for run-time dependency installation
of GTK+ and Cairo for build-time dependency installation). The rule on
CRAN is just to make sure that the package can be compiled purely from
sources and binaries are rather a convenience (Python can be equally
well compiled form sources). Uwe's comment was about the necessity to
make all sources available for GPL licensed packages in either case.
Cheers,
Simon
but after some thinking I fully understand that many people would
object to this for good reasons: R code depending on a C compiler
will not work without a C Compiler either. For security reasons we
cannot allow packages to install a binary C compiler. So, yes, I
understand the reasons but still it is a pity.
The current situation is that many MS Windows users can not easily
use "dataframes2xls". There are a few reasons:
* Most users of MS Windows will be unfamiliar with Python, which
will make them reluctant to install Python.
* Installing Python will be impossible on many MS Windows platforms
due to limited user rights.
* Downloading a standard Python installer takes about 15 Megabytes.
My newly created "write2xls" package just contains 1.3 MB.
So only few R users can benefit from "dataframes2xls". An
alternative to "dataframes2xls" is "write.xls". "dataframes2xls" is
technically superior, as it allows the specification of proper
formatting and fonts. "dataframes2xls" also exists longer. However,
"write.xls" is available to many more R users because it depends on
Perl, which is installed as a part of the R-tools.
So, I think it would be a pity not to provide "write2xls", since I
have it readily available now. Therefore, I will probably be hosting
"write2xls" on a different repository, as long as no Python
Interpreter is included in the R-tools. Does anyone know of a
alternative repository, which does accept "trustworthy" R packages
with a binary Python Interpreter.
Thanks!
Best wishes,
Guido van Steen
P.S. For those who are interested or who would like to test it, at
the moment "write2xls" can be downloaded as "http://www.heppel.net/write2xls_0.4.4.9.zip
". The "source" package is available as "http://www.heppel.net/write2xls_0.4.4.9.tar.gz
".
P.P.S. I think that on MS Windows the combination of R and the R
tools is just as much a potential security risk as allowing to
include a Python Interpreter in a binary package. The R website
should pay more serious attention to this.
P.P.P.S. Uwe also brings up the issue of licensing. However, this is
not a problem at all. The Python license is one of the most
permissive licenses around. For the Python Interpreter that I
included in the "write2xls" package, I used pyMingW, which is
distributed under an MIT license. It is a version of Python compiled
by the MinGW compiler. Thanks to this pyMingW distribution I also
avoid the need of any Microsoft-owned dlls. "dataframes2xls" and
"write2xls" are also distributed under a MIT license.
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