importing remote files

[frenkiboy]

Would it be possible to extend import to import files located on a specified remote repository?

e.g. importing R scripts directly from github.

Cheers,

Vedran

[klmr]

I previously didn’t want to allow this but the more I think about it, the more I like the idea.

That said, the long-term goal is to create something akin to Ruby Bundler: a way of specifying versioned dependencies for every module such that installing modules globally or locally will always use the correct version, even if multiple versions of the same module are installed.

But even so I think it would be useful to import from a web source. The Go language for instance allows imports from Github.

[grst]

I would argue that importing scripts from the web is bad for reproducibility (and we already have enough reproducibility issues).

That being said, getting a module from the web and then storing a local copy would be quite nice.