[Rd] Creating RPMs for Packages

[Max Kuhn]

My company is trying to manage R installations across a number large
SMP machines. We're thinking out the best way to manage the packages
installs and updates. They would be happy if we could work out RPM's
for package installations (traceable, easily facilitated with existing
sw management tools).

I don't know a lot and RPMs beyond how to use them, but it seems
plausible to write R code to create the RPM package. If we need to
update package X, which triggers and update of ancillary packages Y
and Z, it should be possible to use available.packages() to figure out
the dependencies, download the sources, write out the RPM headers and
package things up.

Before I try to write any code, does anyone see any issues with this
(or has it already been done)? Is this a ridiculous approach?

Thanks,

Max