[ I send the following to d-devel and d-science earlier today; Cyril responded suggesting that talk to -release re paragraphs 2 and 3, and to -security re paragraph 4. Comments welcome, and CCs appreciated. --Dirk ]
On 16 October 2009 at 13:29, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote: | R 2.10.0, due out October 26, will switch to an internal html converter from | the latex-alike Rd format coupled with an internal webserver. See below for | the section on 'Significant user-visible changes' in the NEWS file from | 2.10.0 -- taken from the Oct 13 beta currently in unstable. | | This means we "should" rebuild all packages or else they will upon load | trigger a nagging message 'package foo was built under R version x.y.z and | may not function properly' as well as possible malfunctions of the help | system. As we're only talking 100+ packages, this should work. | | I would appreciate some pointers as to how I can milk out fancypants new mega | databases to extracts all packages (matching r-cran-*; there are only one or | two exceptions to that rules) and their maintainers ... and ideally even | monitor most recent re-builds. Anybody feel like sharing some hints with me | off-line? | | Also, and the security minded folks may want to consider the second bullet | point: do we need to worry about this or not as it is just the loopback | interface? Seems fine to me but I figured I'd better ask :) | | Please CC me on replies. | | Cheers, Dirk | | | | | | ************************************************** | * * | * 2.10 SERIES NEWS * | * * | ************************************************** | | | CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.10.0 | | | SIGNIFICANT USER-VISIBLE CHANGES | | o Package help is now converted from Rd by the R-based converters | that were first introduced in 2.9.0. This means | | - Packages that were installed by R-devel after 2009-08-09 | should not be used with earlier versions of R, and most | aspects of package help (including the runnable examples) | will be missing if they are so used. | | - Text, HTML and latex help and examples for packages | installed under the new system are converted on-demand from | stored parsed Rd files. (Conversions stored in packages | installed under R < 2.10.0 are used if no parsed Rd files | are found. It is recommended that such packages be | re-installed.) | | | o HTML help is now generated dynamically using an HTTP server | running in the R process and listening on the loopback | interface. | | - Those worried about security implications of such a server | can disable it by setting the environment variable | R_DISABLE_HTTPD to a non-empty value. This disables | help.start() and HTML help (so text help is shown instead). | | - The Java/Javascript search engine has been replaced by an | HTML interface to help.search(). help.start() no longer has | an argument 'searchEngine' as it is no longer needed. | | - The HTML help can now locate cross-references of the form | \link[pkg]{foo} and \link[pkg:foo]{bar} where 'foo' is an | alias in the package, rather than the documented (basename | of a) filename (since the documentation has been much | ignored). | | | | | -- | Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions. | | | -- | To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-science-requ...@lists.debian.org | with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org | -- Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-security-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org