Not much reason to have */R-cran-* ports

[Yuri]

On 03/20/18 11:20, Eugene Grosbein wrote:
> It is a bit funny you are bothered on 250 R-cran-* ports when we have 1908 p5-* ports,
> 964 py-* ports, 600 rubygem-* ports and 280 hs-* ports in the single ports/devel category.
>
> Are you planning to ban and remove p5 ports too? Most of them should be from CPAN.
> We had BSDPAN for some time even...


You are missing the key differences:

1. Python and perl ports represent individually run software with their 
own executables, when R doesn't. R packages are only useful in the 
context of R, as building blocks of larger R programs only runnable in R 
environment. R packages are much more dependent on environment.


2. With python, there is a hope of having all major software pieces in 
ports. With R there is no such hope. There are thousands of individual 
small R packages, while we only have 250 in ports with no hope or reason 
to add another few thousands. Now, if I want to use some R package 
should I look it up in ports and try to port if it is missing? Of course 
not, I will just install it from R. It's much easier this way,


Yuri