[Developers] What we need in ADMB

[Arni Magnusson]

Good point Mark, this opens a new and exciting chapter for the ADMB 
Project. I have created a new Plone directory,

   http://admb-project.org/community/libraries

containing Steve Martell's instructions and example.

The R package model is indeed very successful, and was based on the 
experience of older software projects, such as LaTeX. The R approach goes 
something like this:

(1) For a package to be accepted, every function must be documented in a 
standard format, described in the "Writing R Extensions" manual. The R 
Team provides the service of compiling a user manual (HTML and PDF) from 
the standard documentation format. Furthermore, package authors should 
write an example application or two, demonstrating how the function works.

(2) A package gets kicked out of the collection if the example 
applications crash in the newest version of R, after a few weeks grace 
period.

(3) Specific functions are occasionally promoted from a user package into 
one of the base packages. This is rare and only dicussed in "closed 
meetings".

(4) Most packages focus on a well-defined theme of tasks, but there's also 
a few PeterMisc and PaulMisc packages around.

We could adopt a similar approach. The standard documentation format would 
probably use Doxygen, and it should be easy to compile a user manual from 
that. Our Buildbot could test the example applications.

John Sibert knows Doxygen best, so maybe he can suggest a standard 
documentation format, with an example of what the corresponding user 
manual might look like. To keep things simple, we could work from Steve 
Martell's contribution 
(http://admb-project.org/community/libraries/example.cpp/view).

Arni



On Thu, 17 Jun 2010, Mark Maunder wrote:

> From the recently sent around R article under why R succeeded:
>
> "The package system, introduced early in the life of R, permits 
> individuals to participate in the development of R without the direct 
> intervention of the R Core group. In a sense, the package system - like 
> version control - is a technological solution to a social problem: how 
> to invite, motivate, and coordinate the activity of hundreds of 
> volunteers without overwhelming the resources of the Core team."
>
> We need to have a place for user supplied libraries. We need to start it 
> off by a number of us including our own libraries. Finally, we need a 
> way to review the libraries, "certify them", then add them to the core 
> code.
>
> Mark
>