[R] R 1.8 for debian

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 08:31:35AM +0700, Philippe Glaziou wrote:
> Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> wrote:
>  Sure, got uploaded the day of the 1.8 release. You may want to
> > learn how to point apt at different archives. Debian has 1.8 in
> > unstable; CRAN has it in testing (thanks to Doug Bates) and
> > even in stable (thanks to Korbinian Strimmer)
> 
> 
> Please, note also that if your debian box has the compilers and
> header files required to compile R from source, then building
> your own deb packages should be easy because the developers
> included all relevant debian files in the sources.  There is

Yes, but you're coming close to confusing two things here. R upstream has a
debian/ dir, yes, but it has a time lag that occurs because Doug and I only
synchronise every few months between my Debian sources and what is in CVS.
For example, a fix I just put into 1.8.0-2 (concerning the Atlas/Blas
interaction) may not get into CVS until 1.8.1.

> little need to tweak /etc/apt/sources.list to get the latest
> vintage of debianized R, nor to wait if you need non-intel
> binaries. 
> 
>   sudo apt-get install fakeroot  # if not already installed
>   tar xvzf R-1.8.0.tgz
>   cd R-1.8.0
>   dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot   # now is time to have a coffee...
>   cd ..
>   sudo dpkg -i r-*               # this will install everything
> 

But if you grab the package sources from Debian, rather than CRAN, and
preferably from unstable, then your advise is spot-on. Locally building .deb
package is very easy, and a good way to customise if that is desired.  For
the rest, there's always apt-get :)  Thanks for pointing that out.

Dirk

-- 
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
                                                -- Groucho Marx