EventID: 2
Shortname: comparativer
URL: http://informatics.nescent.org/wiki/R_Hackathon_1
Comparative phylogenetic methods provide a rich and powerful way to understand the evolution of organismal traits. A wide variety of statistical methods and tools have been developed to rigorously test hypotheses about rates and modes of trait evolution, trait covariation, correlation of traits with ecological and environmental factors, host/parasite co-evolution, etc. The R statistical analysis package has emerged as a popular platform for implementation of these methods.
The many individual software development efforts in R and the growing number of users presented an opportunity to address the common challenges of data exchange, interoperability, and usability. NESCent took advantage of this opportunity by sponsoring a hackathon, or codefest, an event at which programmers who otherwise do not have the opportunity to interact on a routine basis meet to collaboratively develop working code that furthers the goals of the larger open development community to which they belong. The hackathon brought together different people and groups who had started to develop comparative phylogenetic methods in the R platform, or who would had wanted to integrate their methods into, or interface a tool with the R platform.
This event separated potential project ideas into End User Goals and Programming goals.
The final list of subgroups
The 7 subgroups produced code and documentation. Code outputs were stored temporarily in an R-forge repository (that apparently no longer exists), and eventually moved into projects such as geiger, ape and phylobase. Documentation outputs were developed on a NESCent wiki and eventually moved to the R-Phylo wiki. According to Hilmar Lapp, as of 14 Mar 2015, most of the content of the R-Phylo wiki is from the original hackathon.