On Jun 25, 2009, at 11:38 AM, Rowe, Brian Lee Yung (Portfolio
Analytics) wrote:
Hello useRs:
Does anyone have thoughts on the lifecycle of older releases of R? I
know that currently the 2.8.x and 2.9.x releases seem to be actively
"supported" on the mailing lists, but what about older releases, say
2.4.x? Curious to hear when people think older versions of R become
obsolete and unsupportable on the lists (or other venues).
Regards,
Brian
For a description of R's formal SDLC, read:
http://www.r-project.org/doc/R-FDA.pdf
While that document is targeted to R users in the domain of regulated
clinical trials, much of the content is relevant to other general use
domains.
From the perspective of getting community support on R-Help, if you
are using version 2.4.0 and you post a version independent query to
the list, you will get a helpful reply, especially if you don't
include in the post that you are running version 2.4.0.
However, it is possible that in the replies, there may be references
to functions, function arguments or packages that are part of or are
designed for newer versions of R. Upon reading that reply, you may end
up scratching your head, wondering why you cannot find them in your
version, which may prompt you to reply requesting clarification. That
may lead you down the path to the next scenario...
If you include in your post (or a follow up) that you are actually
using version 2.4.0, you will get a series of rather curt
recommendations to update to the current release version of R included
in any responses to your query.
However, if you post a query pertaining to what you perceive as a bug
in 2.4.0 or a more recent version (possibly even 2.9.0 with 2.9.1
imminent), you will get a pretty rapid stream of replies, with a level
of hostility (flaming) included. Those replies will tell you in no
uncertain terms, that you better upgrade to the most recent version of
R (which may include a "patched" version) before reporting bugs
against versions that from a development standpoint, are no longer
supported. You would be expected to check the most recent version that
you can install to see if the behavior that you perceive as a bug is
still present.
The worst case scenario perhaps, in terms of being on the receiving
end of flames, would be to actually submit a formal bug report on an
older version of R, as that requires a **volunteer** member of R Core
to have to stop what they are doing and spend time manually
administering that report.
Finally, a good reference to go along with this general discussion, is
the Posting Guide, listed at the bottom of all e-mails coming from the
list:
http://www.r-project.org/posting-guide.html
HTH,
Marc Schwartz
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