runjags / Notifications: Recent posts

A minor update of runjags has been submitted to CRAN (and is now in the Files section), which implements a number of bug fixes that I have been accumulating for the last few months. Note that this will be the last version to support JAGS version 3.x - the next version will be a slightly more substantial update and will require JAGS 4.0.0 (or later).

The accompanying manuscript is also in the last stages of being published at JSS - please cite runjags in future publications as:... read more

Version 2.0.3-2 of runjags is now on CRAN. This fixes a few bugs, including a particularly nasty bug that could cause problems with reporting the deviance when using rjags (thanks again to those who reported the problem).

Mac OS X users - note that the CRAN OS X build system still has JAGS 3 installed, so the binary file for runjags produced by CRAN is also built against JAGS 3. If you need to use the internal JAGS module, download the runjags_2.0.3-2_JAGS4.zip file from here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/runjags/files/runjags/

A minor update (runjags_2.0.3-1.tar.gz) is now available on the files page. This contains improvements to the configure script which should allow easier compilation against JAGS 3 and 4 (particularly on Windows). See the README file inside the package directory for more instructions - if that doesn't help and you are still having problems installing this package then please let me know!

Version 2.0.2 of runjags is now on CRAN. Note that users of JAGS version 4 (currently in beta) can use the binaries of runjags provided by CRAN, although attempts to load the internal runjags module (for extended Pareto family distributions etc) will fail unless the package is built locally against JAGS 4. I will hopefully get around to uploading some more binaries to sourceforge soon.

The next minor-release update to runjags (runjags_2.0.2-6) is now on the files page. This will be released to CRAN within the next few days, plus/minus any new last-minute issues that crop up in the meantime.

There are a raft of bug fixes, but one of the major modifications is that the package should now compile against either JAGS version 3 or JAGS version 4. However, I don't have facilities to test all possible setups, so if you are able to compile this with the recently available JAGS 4 beta (particularly on Windows) I would appreciate you dropping me a line to let me know if it works ... or otherwise!

A small update to runjags (2.0.2-1) is available from the files page. This fixes a bug causing problems with modules/factories using a hyphen (-) in the name somewhere, and allows calculation of the effective sample size to fail more gracefully when the underlying effectiveSize function fails. The next CRAN release will incorporate these updates but will likely not be for a few months.

Version 2.0.1 of the runjags package is now available on CRAN. This is a substantial update to version 1.x, with a lot of low-level changes to improve speed and reliability as well as a number of additional features including:

• The plot and summary methods have been totally overhauled
• There are now improved mechanisms for recovering failed simulations through results.jags
• A new template.jags function creates a GLM model file based on a dataset and a model formula using lme4-like syntax
• A new mutate option to the plot/summary methods allows new variables (which are deterministic functions of monitored variables) to be automatically calculated in R and summarised with the other monitored variables (this reduces the computational overhead compared to calculation in JAGS)
• A new quick-start vignette is available - a short version is included with the CRAN release, but a longer version (which will likely be added to over time) is available through the sourceforge page at http://runjags.sourceforge.net... read more

Starting with version 2.x, occasional news relating to the runjags package will be announced through this sourceforge page. If you would like to be kept informed then feel free to subscribe to the notifications.