I have a script that I run every night and it checks for a long list
of R packages and installs what is needed.  On a new SL5 system, I
noticed that the script failed because the package "coda" was not
available.  "There's a mistake" I thought to myself, because coda is
one of the heavily used packages for Bayesian MCMC modeling.

It turned out that the CRAN current version of coda is set to ONLY
compile for R >= 2.5.  Since the SL5 version of R is 2.4, the package
manager was not able to find the coda package.  I updated R on the
system to the version that is available in Fedora and then the package
script worked fine.

I understand the SL5 philosophy of preferring stable things, but since
R is one of the "feature packages" that differentiates Scientific
Linux from other RedHat EL descendants like CentOS, it seems important
to me that you should keep R more up to date than most packages.

I went to the SL website to try to enter this opinion, but I find it
is necessary to log in and I can't find a place where I can register
myself.  What's up with that?

-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas