[R] R, VR, and Debian

[(Ted Harding)]

Hi Folks,
A while ago (September 2007) I set up an experimental
Debian 4.0 Etch installation, and installed R on it,
along with several packages -- including e1071 and
the "Bundle" VR -- by means of the Debian package
manager. Most of the time, R works fine. But not always.

Just now, I wanted to try the code suggested by
Johannes Hüsing for "Stroparia"'s Multiset Permutation
question.

The first line is "library(e1071)" -- this failed
because:

library(e1071)
Loading required package: class
Error: package 'class' could not be loaded
In addition: Warning message:
there is no package called 'class' in: library(pkg,
character.only = TRUE, logical = TRUE, lib.loc = lib.loc) 

The Debian package manager tells me that "r-cran-vr"
is fully installed, and that
"The VR package contains four individuals packages:
MASS, class, nnet and spatial."

Also, that the installed version of r-cran-vr is
7.2.29-1 and also that this is the latest version.
However, the version on CRAN is 7.2-41.

A search downwards from /usr/lib/R finds nothing that
matches "class", "nnet", nor "spatial", though MASS
is there. 'locate class', 'locate nnet', 'locate spatial'
all draw blanks (as far as anything to do with R is
concerned). So these packages, allegedly part of VR,
have not been installed.

I thought of uninstalling VR and re-installing, but
after I marked it for deletion I was told that lots
of other packages would disappear as well, so I
backed off.

It would seem, therefore, that installing R via the
Debian repositories can be a close approximation to
a waste of time!

Additionally, in the past I have encountered a block
when trying to install R packages from source, on this
system, because something is wrong with 'gfortran'.

I do not want to have to fight Debian in order to get
on with using R, and (once again) feel discouraged
about continuing to use a Linux distribution which,
in other respects, is of high repute.

I would be grateful for comments on the above observations,
and particularly grateful for suggestions about how to
overcome these problems.

With best wishes to all,
Ted.

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 06-Apr-08                                       Time: 23:58:27
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