Brook Milligan
2014-09-05 16:15:32 UTC
Some of you have noticed that I have committed a handful of R packages recently. As per the current pkgsrc state-of-the-art, these all went into math. It has been pointed out that perhaps some of these should have gone into other categories. I know there is policy against moving package categories, but perhaps since none of these are yet in a release it would be an appropriate time to discuss.
There is, however, a larger issue: existing R packages already cover a much wider range of categories (e.g., at least biology, geography, www, etc.) than implied by them all being in math. Thus, perhaps a broader policy discussion is relevant prior to the upcoming branch. Here are the two alternative views as I see them:
- Other language-specific packages (e.g., perl and python) have packages scattered across categories so why should not R packages be organized along category lines?
+ Pros: consistency with pkgsrc organization generally
+ Cons: implementing this consistently requires moving existing R packages to new categories
- All R packages are now in math, why not keep that organization?
+ Pros: consistent with current organization of R packages, single place (e.g., math) to look for R packages
+ Cons: inconsistent with rest of pkgsrc, perhaps surprising not to find R packages in an expected category
Can we identify a consensus for how to handle the categorization of R packages that covers long-standing, newly committed and future ones?
Cheers,
Brook
There is, however, a larger issue: existing R packages already cover a much wider range of categories (e.g., at least biology, geography, www, etc.) than implied by them all being in math. Thus, perhaps a broader policy discussion is relevant prior to the upcoming branch. Here are the two alternative views as I see them:
- Other language-specific packages (e.g., perl and python) have packages scattered across categories so why should not R packages be organized along category lines?
+ Pros: consistency with pkgsrc organization generally
+ Cons: implementing this consistently requires moving existing R packages to new categories
- All R packages are now in math, why not keep that organization?
+ Pros: consistent with current organization of R packages, single place (e.g., math) to look for R packages
+ Cons: inconsistent with rest of pkgsrc, perhaps surprising not to find R packages in an expected category
Can we identify a consensus for how to handle the categorization of R packages that covers long-standing, newly committed and future ones?
Cheers,
Brook